March 2, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[2:13] March 2nd 2023 a business meeting of the Boulder City Council I'm going to go ahead and looks like council chambers is muted so we can't hear on Zoom oh there we go thank you so much can everybody hear me now okay great I will repeat good evening everyone and welcome to the March 2nd 2023 regular meeting of the Boulder City Council I'm going to go ahead and call us to order and ask Emily who is our acting city clerk for the evening to do the Roll Call thank you so much Mary roll call present mayor Brockett present council member folkerts present friend here

[3:00] Joseph here are council member spear here mayor Pro tem Wallach weiner here and Yates right here mayor we have our quorum thanks so much Emily and so now I would request a motion to amend the agenda to add an item 8B a discussion on boards and commissions updates to council second motion a second all in favor show of hands that passes unanimously and I'm just going to take a moment before we turn to our next thing to just to acknowledge that it's been a frightening couple of weeks in our community we had a shooting incident at the Millennium Hotel we had a very scary false report of a shooting incident at Boulder High followed by a second false report um just yesterday as well as as an injury shooting in downtown a couple nights ago so just wanted to acknowledge

[4:01] that in this time where gun violence is a Scourge across our society this has been a frightening time for our community but just want to thank all the First Responders in the school district and everyone else who has helped to make sure that everyone is has been as safe as possible through these incidents thanks for listening to that now I will turn to council member folkerts for a national women's History Month declaration thank you mayor March 2023 is women's History Month each year women's History Month offers an opportunity an important opportunity for each for us to shine a light on the extraordinary Legacy of trailblazing women and girls who have built shaped and improved upon our community women have been leaders not only in securing their own rights of suffrage and equal opportunity but also leaders in the Abolitionist Movement the

[5:00] Emancipation movement the industrial labor movement the Civil Rights Movement the movement for racial equity and countless other peace movements that have led to a more fair and just Society for all yet despite women's immeasurable contributions to the fight to advance civil rights and other civil liberties early feminist movements were not inclusive of all women these initial calls for social justice focused on the experience of women who were cisgender heterosexual and white today we acknowledge the equality and significance of all women including transgender women queer women women with disabilities women of color and unhoused women in our pursuit of social justice for all women of every race class and ethnic background have made historic contributions to the growth and strength of Boulder in countless recorded and unrecorded ways

[6:00] we the city council and the city of Boulder Colorado declare March 2023 as women's history month and invite the community to join us in a celebration of all women and the progress we have made as a society as well as reflect on the work still ahead to reach full gender equality thank you thank you for that Lauren okay we're now going to move to open comment and I will now turn to Brenda writtenauer to read our public participation guidelines thank you and if Elisha you could share those guidelines I think I saw them shared in chamber there we go wonderful thank you so much um so we know that many of you who have joined us tonight have seen these slides many times we do appreciate your patience while we go over them for folks who have not joined us as often um we do want you to be aware that this

[7:00] city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive Civic conversations this Vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members for staff and for Council as well as supporting democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives more information about this vision and the community engagement process that we conducted to lead to it please go to our website bouldercolorado.gov and type productive atmospheres into the search bar there the following are examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this vision and these will be upheld during this meeting tonight all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to City business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person sanity racial epithets and other speech

[8:02] and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited participants are required to sign up to speak using the name that they are commonly known by and individuals must must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online currently only audio testimony is permitted online and if you do need me to change your name you are welcome to reach out to me in the Q a box and I can help with that in-person participants are asked to refrain from expressing support or disagreement verbally or with Applause with the exception of declarations as you just heard council member folkerts read traditionally support is shown silently through American Sign Language Applause or sometimes we call them jazz hands or Sparkle hands you may feel free to practice now and thank you very much with that we can move on to open comments

[9:00] thank you Brandon that's the first time I've heard spark lands I like that okay so we have seven in-person speakers and three virtual speakers each speaker will have two minutes to speak our first three in-person speakers are Jared Curran Travis Cully and Michelle Rodriguez so Jared okay doesn't look like we have Jared in the room so Travis Cully good evening Council it's a pleasure to be here I'm gonna go full speed Miss weiner I want to appreciate your full-throated statement on to the benefits of sufficient signage on our Mountain trails I believe more weight should be placed on the signage around the Rocky Flats perimeter operating unit otherwise known as The Wildlife Refuge not because people may get lost or need emergency services but because contaminated gravel from The Wildlife Refuge can be mishandled there on the Refuge

[10:04] um it can be taken off the Refuge it can endow common properties of everyday things in Civilization with radioactive characteristics forcing us to reconsider the behaviors of the four elements in themselves and in combination if signage around Rocky Flats is not given real attention and considered a serious issue all of the work of fire Crews and Fire Marshals some 37 million dollars recently allocated will be undermined change out clean Earth for fugitive plutonium change out water with diesel fuel or petrol readily available in Civilization change out air into a blast of radiation and fire can be made without a spark this is called automatic combustion I believe this is what took place between the two diesel tanks on the 12 tribes property at 11 A.M on December

[11:02] 30th period the 12 tribes community did not burn down their own Barn nor did they elect to be EG and G's next industrial scapegoat detectives made an incomplete investigation of the community members themselves I would like to give you a synopsis of what I believe actually took place in an email or to council or in private I'm eager for feedback and direction from you thank you Travis next we have Michelle Rodriguez then Larry mchua and Jane Williams hi guys um I submitted something earlier I'm not sure I think it was forwarded on to you guys uh it's not something that you can review all in this two minutes I'm doing it two minutes at a time but uh tonight I didn't realize it was celebrating women's history night so I wanted to

[12:01] recognize somebody that's made of a big difference in my life uh judge Christie Martinez we lost her in Boulder County last week I think it was and uh as a few of you know I've got some controversial things that have gone on in the courts but I want to acknowledge that she was one of the most righteous uh judges or people of uh people of the courts that I've ever run across she was very fair and made a ruling of a prosecutorial misconduct in one of my cases and it meant everything to me because it showed uh just this tiny bit of a of acknowledgment for for the the injustices that I've been trying to prove for so long I had no idea she was sick and it was devastated to find out

[13:02] she'd passed away and I just saw I want to honor her her part in my life and I'd like um I gave neria a little better heads up about what I had submitted tonight I don't want to take the the light anymore off of it with me crying over judge Martinez's loss but um I asked that the court uh the courts that the city council and and the powers that be just review what I've submitted um I'm trying to find peace peace of my mind and my heart to be able to move forward somehow but um thank you guys Michelle now we have Larry mcilgo Jane Williams and Jonathan Finch good evening members of council my name is Larry mchio I've been a boulder resident for 33 years and Avid user of city parks and rec services for 20. and I've been working with Parks and Rec

[14:00] staff for the last 15 primarily primarily by running Open Water swims at the res for Boulder aquatic Masters I'm here to comment on over management and under utilization at the boulder Reservoir this is the same topic that I commented on a year ago pre-pandemic the reservoir opened at 5am to allow motivated users to make use of the valuable Sunshine during the short summer season last week City Parks and Rec staff presented the 2023 Reservoir rates to adult user groups operating outside of normal operating hours this included a 300 price increase the short of what we were told was the city doesn't want to continue to subsidize user groups and the city doesn't view the user groups as partners in providing a community benefit please note user groups such as Boulder aquatic Masters and the rowers pay the city staff to be present for the full 5 a.m hour despite sometimes needing less we also pay full rates for watercraft permits on-site storage facility access and rental fees and we Supply our own volunteer safety personnel along with the requisite training to meet or exceed

[15:01] any City requirements in Bam's case this is all for the luxury of just doing setup work for a swim that occurs during normal operating hours as you can hear we're not against paying for services used it's a 300 figure mentioned earlier was based on a calculation that took the total operating budget divided by the total number of operating hours across the entire year to create a uniform blanket rate no discount is offered given the Skeleton Crew needed at this time the res acknowledges different usage in the off season and adjusts the rates by up to 100 percent when a user group is willing to self-support to the point of supplying equipment Personnel training insurance coverage to defray the cost of an underutilized hour of the day why are we penalized for our efforts thank you thank you Larry now we have Jane Williams then Jonathan Finch and Evan ravitz do we have Jane in the room seeing none will go to Jonathan Finch

[16:01] Jonathan's out here either okay it's a light night for attendance uh Evan Evan is in the room good evening Evan ravitz North Boulder congratulations to City Council on deciding a true Retreat last week to stop repeating the same thing for the homeless over and over again respecting expecting a different result as both Lauren and Rachel said which was Einstein's definition of insanity my late friend Dr Bob McFarland the first medical director of The People's clinic now Clinica and founder of the parenting Place told Council in the 60s that young people with little or no money would always be attracted to Boulder and we should provide a campground instead the city has increasingly criminalized camping anywhere near here

[17:00] over the half half century the city has made thousands of enemies many hundreds of lives have been shortened degraded and ended God knows how many fingers and toes have been amputated by because of frostbite at least three wildfires are likely to have been started by homeless people just in the last six years or so presumably hiding Camp fires under trees but we never learned the truth as as we still haven't about the newborn baby and mother who died outdoors with inside of the hospital a couple of years ago it looks like the city's manifold homeless enemies have figured out that smoking meth can close down libraries bus stations and now ATMs costing us Millions the city has a whole lot of explaining to do the best explanation I've heard for repeating this Insanity for over half a century was in 2017 when

[18:02] the late Sam Sussman then a board member of downtown Boulder told me quote downtown Boulder runs the city again I suggest treating the homeless with the golden rule thank you thank you Evan now going to move to our online speakers who are Tyler hollenbach Lynn Siegel and Mark Eller okay can you hear me yes um good evening I'm here tonight to comment on the responsiveness of the city to overgrown sidewalk obstructions in the fall of 2021 I chose to commute by foot multiple days per week I walked roughly four miles each day and encountered one particular section of poorly maintained vegetation along Folsom Street which severely encroached on the sidewalk the obstruction over the course of several hundred feet meant that it was necessary to walk off the sidewalk and onto a strip of grass or into the street side bike path

[19:01] it put pedestrians bikers pets and ultimately drivers at potential risk this is not only an inconvenience but it was also an accessibility issue and may have robbed residents with disabilities of their ability to reasonably use the public right-of-way on the boulder services website there's a function to report overgrown sidewalk and a number to call I was pleased with how easy it was to find the number and make a report but unfortunately my report went unanswered for almost an entire year I also know that another individual made a report on the same section city ordinance 8-6 indicates that encroachments into the public right-of-ways are public nuisances 8-6-8 A4 provides that there will be eight feet of vertical clearance and 18 inches of side clearance on all sidewalks seniority ordinance 6-2 indicates that brush and shrub should be maintained so as not to collect trash debris and Rubble unfortunately the issue on Folsom Street violated the legislative intent of both of these ordinances under those ordinances the

[20:01] city upon becoming aware of an infraction his request is to request that the adjacent property owner adhere to the ordinance or the city can clear the nuisance themselves and assign the cost to the owner the ordinance operates on both a short on a short timeline and aims to Resolute resolve these in seven days given the city's emphasis on sustainability and encouraging the use of walking and bike paths I ask that the city improve its responsiveness and ensure that the maintenance of paths and walkways in accordance with the city's own ordinances for the health and safety of all Boulder residents thank you Tyler thank you Lynn Siegel then Mark Keller before you before it's on your screen and I pinned it so you should be able to see it easily have you seen it I'm not sure what else I can do um if you change your view to gallery

[21:03] then you should be able to see it that way there's a um button in the top right corner so um Lynn I'd suggest maybe a timer on your phone but we should proceed please when are you starting as soon as you start talking first of all I don't know how many times I've complained that you get tonight you had 14 minutes of public participation so far you'll get one more or no it's actually less than that you're supposed to have 45. what gives not even an answer in years of my complaining years now tonight you're evaluating the scope s-t-o-k the developer at 22 and pearl last night at the landmarks board I heard them also going for another bit of

[22:02] affordable middle income housing and what they're doing at 22 Pearl is 45 units there probably should be 10 there each one is 300 square feet no parking space for 1700 to 2600 per month that's the area immediate income area media income of 80 to 120 percent this is filling the huge amount of basically unaffordable housing that we have in Boulder it's not helping the middle if the middle is 125 000 a year then all it's doing is drawing up more housing into high income levels because the area median income in Boulder is high

[23:00] and it it it's not the people that live here are not indexed in their rent to that high income so what you get is a discussion of hours that you had on the 24th about homelessness and you're going to look to the county you're going to look to somebody else but you know what we need to start doing this is an international problem but thank you for your testimony where it starts Boulder starts here thank you last speaker is Mark Eller hi Council my name is Mark Eller and I live and work in the city of Boulder I'm the president of Boulder Community Rowing a non-profit Rowing Club that's associated with Colorado Junior crew so Council if I came to you tonight with a proposal that Boulders trails and Open Spaces should be prioritizing motorized Recreation like dirt bikes and ATVs and

[24:03] that activities like hiking and bicycling should get priority on the trails for just a few hours a week I wouldn't get very far with that suggestion but that's exactly the management strategy currently in place for the reservoir where the vast majority of open hours favor motorized Recreation like water skiing and power boating imagine that your favorite Trail in Boulder was only open for hiking without traffic from dirt bikes and ATVs on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 to 11 A.M and on Sundays until noon that is exactly the scenario that rowers paddlers and swimmers other quiet users of the West Reservoir as well we all face the reservoir staff will say that anyone can use the water when high speed uses are allowed but that's like saying the trails are open to everyone and dirt bikes and ATVs will probably move out out of the way while you're out on a hike quiet sport users like swimmers and rowers have traditionally paid the city

[25:00] for access to the reservoir in the early morning hours but the demand for these hours is incredibly high so the city charges us ever increasing rates in 2023 the rate will be 279 dollars an hour tenfold what we paid just a few years ago the effect of this is to once again prioritize motorized high-speed Recreation over human-powered activities I believe this is out of line with the values most Boulder residents share I hope you'll consider recommending to staff that no wake hours should be significantly expanded and not just during work or school hours that would bring huge benefits to Boulders human-powered Recreation scene thank you for listening thank you Mark so I'll turn to our city manager or City attorney to see if there are any follow-ups thank you mayor a couple things one is I I wanted to thank Michelle for her sharing prior to the meeting and her vulnerability as she expressed herself today so thank you

[26:01] um I wanted to mention to folks that are director of Parks and Recreation is not with us at the moment but I understand that she has been meeting with both the Boulder Community Rowing and Boulder aquatic Masters and this issue of the fee policy will actually be coming to council very shortly here and an upcoming meeting so there will be more detail on that um and then I just wanted to appreciate the comments regarding obstruction of sidewalks and pedestrian Pathways I know that we as staff take that seriously too and we will continue to improve uh and figure out ways to enhance those efforts thank you thank you Maria any Council follow-ups Nicole yeah I just have around the fee policies for the rowing and things my understanding is that those contracts are coming up real soon that folks are supposed to sign and so I was just wondering if that's going to come to us before folks are expected to sign those or if you have a sense of

[27:00] that I don't know what the timing is but I do know that we are expected to have that conversation and I want to say it's in April so it is coming up fairly soon here um as I move forward and I know that the topic of conversation on what do we provide subsidies for and um for what purpose and in terms of our Equity lens and what we're doing I think will be part of that conversation but I can follow up with you and let you know when those contracts are coming specifically yes and then I just wanted to check in a little bit on the sidewalk obstruction um that was brought up a year seems like a very long time I assume that's not what we typically see in terms of how long it takes to respond to those kinds of issues do you have any idea what we're looking at I don't and I'm happy to follow up on that I I find it um I don't want to Discount the color right because I haven't looked into it

[28:00] um it seems to me that if there is an exception in a sidewalk where we know strollers or wheelchairs are going that we would not let it go on for a year but I I don't know and so we'll be taking a look at those service levels and appropriate times thank you so and I was gonna ask the same question so thanks for that all right seeing no other Council um questions then Emily if I could turn to you for our consent agenda please absolutely next on tonight's agenda we have our consent agenda and that is item 3A regarding the Enclave property at 2415 vine place which includes the adoption of resolution 1326 and first reading of ordinance 8572 thank you any questions or comments on this consent agenda item or emotion even make a motion to pass tonight's consent agenda sorry we have a motion a second this is a roll call votes so Emily if you could

[29:02] we'll start the roll call on tonight's consent mayor Brockett yes council member folkerts yes friend yes Joseph yes council member spear yes weiner yes Yates yes and council member Benjamin yes the consent agenda is hereby approved unanimously with a vote of eight to zero thank you Emily and so now if you could take up to our take us to our call of chicken please tonight's agenda item number 4A is a concept plan review and comment for proposed mixed use Redevelopment at 2206 Pearl Street in the mu3 zoning District to include 45 efficiency living units and commercial space along Pearl Street

[30:00] the application proposes an approximately 64 percent residential parking reduction providing 17 residential spaces where 45 are required this is reviewed under case number lur 2022-00054 alternator I believe we have a presentation on this one short presentation I believe so I thought Charles would give the presentation but but um sorry hi this is Chandler redsgok excellent I'll be giving the presentation I'm uh having a little trouble sharing my screen it's saying that it's disabled well let us get that addressed let me fix that for you Chandler thank you about that I didn't realize you were sharing yourself you should have permission now okay and Chandler before you get started I think the applicant is an attendee but probably should be made a presenter so she could answer questions if necessary that's Dana kapow

[31:00] it's in the attendee list uh yes Danica is here I believe can everyone see my screen in presentation mode yes or is it still showing in presenter mode okay so if you click the three button the the circle with the three buttons you should be able to swap them are we able to get this on the screens in the chambers thank you um oh here we go sorry everyone trying to

[32:00] show you the presentation yeah looks good okay yeah I can't see my notes but um I can move forward anyways um good evening council members and um thanks for joining here um I will be presenting a call up item for 2206 Pearl Street concept plan review um Okay so sorry folks um Chandler would you prefer that we move it from the from here so that you can have your notes are you good um this is fine um so just very quickly I'm going to go over uh concept plan purpose public notification planning context project background a summary of the proposed project and then a summary of the planning board hearing so as you know the concept plan purpose is just to review and provide feedback on a general development plan including land uses General circulation

[33:00] patterns methods of encouraging alternative transportation architecture environmental preservation Etc I'm intended to give the applicant comments from the public city staff planning board and Council early in the process the purpose of this item is for the city council to consider whether to call up the above reference application for review and comment at a public hearing recall a period expires on March 7th um so in terms of public notification written notice was sent to Property Owners within 600 feet notice was also posted on the property staff received multiple comments during the review process expressing concerns about the proposal specifically regarding parking density and affordability prior to the public hearing planning board and staff also received several emails in support of the efficiency living units and the level of intensity on the site emails expressed the need for housing moving away from encouraging vehicular use and supporting micro units so in terms of the project location as you can see here the site is located on Pearl Street between 22nd and 23rd

[34:04] the bvcp land use designation is high density residential and the corresponding Zone district is mu3 this is considered a high density Zone District it's designed for areas of the community that are changing to a mixture of residential and complementary non-residential uses generally within the same building in terms of the surrounding context you can see here it's fairly varied there's some high density residential and a mix of uses as well as single-family homes this is the existing site as you can see here the site is well served by transit and this map shows existing bicycle and pedestrian facilities so there are existing bike Lanes near the site as well as multi-use paths um so the proposed project is for 45

[35:01] efficiency living units um these are units that are 300 square feet with a maximum occupancy of two people the proposed building is three stories 38 feet tall um it's proposing 17 regular parking spaces which is a roughly 64 parking reduction this includes eight Tandem and one car share space then there's also commercials based on the ground level so ground level there would be 2100 square feet of commercial space a plaza a parking garage what the applicant is calling a dog area and five units on level two we have a common Plaza a resident common room and an additional 20 units on level three there's a roof deck PV solar awning and an additional 20 units here are some architectural renderings showing the proposed project from Pearl

[36:00] Street and from 22nd so the planning board hearing took place on March 7 2023 the planning board heard presentations from staff and the applicant and asked questions following each presentation there was testimony from 10 members of the public regarding the concept plan four people spoke in support of The Proposal saying it provides much needed housing and the proposed size and number of units promotes market rate affordability and six people spoke against the project expressing concerns about the parking reduction and overflow of cars into the adjacent neighborhood and right-of-way parking they also Express concerns about the intensity of the use the planning board discussed three key issues with the public hearing the first is uh is the proposed concept preliminarily consistent with the goals objectives and recommendations of the bbcp key issue number two was does planning board have feedback on the proposed parking for the project and key issue number three was does

[37:00] planning board have feedback on the building design and site layout so regarding key issue number one the board generally found that the project meets the goals objectives and recommendations of the bbcp particularly in terms of the project helping to provide a variety of housing types within the city however there was some concern expressed regarding the long-term affordability of the units given that they are not proposed to be deed restricted regarding key issue number two the board was split on whether the requested parking reduction of 64 was appropriate or not there was General agreement that the applicant will need to provide a very robust Transportation demand management plan at the time in site review to support the parking reduction and strategies such as Eco passes leases requiring no vehicle ownership for tenants enhanced car and bike sharing opportunities and other Creative Solutions that disincentivize Vehicles were suggested regarding key issue number three the

[38:00] board agree with agreed with staff's comments and found that the site design is generally consistent with the surrounding area Building architecture will be a major Focus during site review um the board found that additional consideration should be given to landscaping and planting materials and uh thought given to how open space will function the board found that building mass and scale are generally appropriate the applicant should use long lasting high quality materials consistent with the reference images in the application and additional comments Express the importance of Natural Light Within the units as well as Ample Storage and common space within the buildings so next steps if this is not called up by city council the applicant will move forward to site review submittal site review will be referred to dab and will require it which is the design Advisory Board and will require a decision by planning board subject to call up by city council if it is called up by Council the

[39:01] concept plan will be scheduled for Council hearing within 60 days of the call update and Council will be able to provide additional feedback at that time city council also has the authority to refer the concept plan review to the design Advisory board and or the transportation Advisory board for their respective opinions with or without a call-up and that is all I have for the presentation thanks very much Chandler it's uh good to be working together again it's been a little while so indeed good to see you again and so what for a structure I'll say we can ask questions of uh Chandler uh and or the applicant Danica Powell is present here to represent the applicant and then we can decide whether or not we want to call it up and as we do that if we do not call it up people are also free to offer comments instead of a call out so I'll look to first start with questions Bob I have a question for the applicant representative uh Danica does your client um desire that this concept review be called up by

[40:03] Council or did your client receive adequate input from planning board thank you for the question I think we got it had a really great discussion with planning board and we feel like we got adequate input we would if you're willing to weigh in on the parking reduction or the units we'd be happy to take your comment um this is a different type of project for downtown it's not a buy right large condo project that's why we're in site review and use review for the smaller units in the parking reduction and we do have um tandem spaces and a car share space and we plan on doing a lot of TDM but we'd love to hear any additional comment that you have since this is a different type of project for downtown thanks Danica any other questions Lauren you mentioned that there are tandem spaces when that is taken into account

[41:02] um what is the parking reduction if those spaces are counted it's a 42 reduction with the tandem spaces and we also have a car share space our code doesn't account for car share yet but in Denver it's typically five spaces per car share is what they're using in their new parking code and so we haven't accounted for that but with the tandem it would be a 42 parking reduction thank you for that and additionally planning board had made some other recommendations regarding Creative Solutions to ensure sort of a reduced parking meet are there any other options that at this point the applicant is looking at purchasing I think all of them were actually interested in having more than one car share space on site and I think the car share program is also interested in that electric bike charging and really

[42:01] putting the bike first extra bike parking the you know we would be limiting uh parking through the leases and also having kind of a as the applicant who's not here tonight so I'm representing them would describe it's a parking buddy program so using technology to really help facilitate those tandem spaces Stoke is a very sustainably minded company and so we really want to figure out new ways to implement you know people's lifestyle oftentimes you know even with the size of the units um you know people might want a less cluttered life and not a car free life but also providing lots of gear storage and places for people to put toys e-bikes bikes inside the units Etc so I think that's our marching orders moving forward is really how to figure out how to facilitate that in this development thank you

[43:00] any other questions Tara hi Danica what is your plan for how the bicycles and the e-bikes are going to be stored like what mechanism so um the architect is also on the call I don't think he's been promoted as panelists it's dtj Lee Payne if you see him I believe he's online there's a mix of parking long-term parking in the garage storage units as well as bike racks and bike I believe there's we're looking at an integrated bike parking in the units as well and so extra bike parking uh you know and again we haven't gotten to that detail phase Lee just got promoted so Lee do you want to jump in and add any color to that description hi thank you for the intro um I timed out a little bit during your your talk there Danica so I'm not sure if you covered everything but um I believe the question was uh what is our

[44:02] bike parking strategy for the project is that right no okay so nope nope nope we're sorry Lee uh Terrace at melson specifically bike storage so I'm thinking about bike security yes ma'am um we are providing for these 45 units a total of 92 bike parking spots there'll be 24 that are generally associated with public use or visitors then inside the project each unit will receive two bike spots one within their unit that's kind of a wall mount condition and then adjacent to the parking areas an additional 23 spaces and those would be secured those are all within spaces if I I don't know if that's specifically your question those are all uh so 45 plus 23 whatever that is that those are all within a secure enclosure for the residents Rachel I bring that up because remember you were into that European bicycle

[45:00] security conference and there were all these innovative ways to store bicycles more securely than we do here in the United States so I'm looking for innovation in that way may I colloquai and ask a follow-up question please mayor bracket yes um Danica would you like me to share information from the bike I would love it yes that would be really interesting thank you and that's the type of you know uniqueness we're trying to create with these these units are very different they would be furnished they would have very modular um Furniture it's it's a different way of living and I think that bike and and maybe not just bikes scooters what are those little things that are people mono balance on you know anything that's um micro Mobility I think will be very integrated into this project so I'd love to hear about what Europe is doing forward thank you great and Danica Lee if you could just formally introduce yourselves I'd

[46:00] appreciate it thanks Aaron I'm Danica Powell with Trestle strategy group representing Stoke Development Group the applicant I'm Lee Payne with dtj design here in Boulder I'm a partner and the director of architecture great thank you I'm not seeing any other hands raised so then I'll ask council is there any interest in calling this up and absolutely we can make comments but I'm but first i'm not seeing anybody raise their hand to call it up and so then we could offer I would welcome if people want to give a couple of comments to the applicant before we wrap up here tonight so learn if you wanted I do want to thank you and thank you to the applicant for bringing forward this unique project while you know this kind of car light small scale living isn't right for all residents I think it's really important that we have this option and that you know that

[47:01] is a great location for it I'm excited that it sounds like you're listening to particularly the planning board's comments around creating Creative Solutions to help people live carlite um and at this point I would support the parking reduction that we're seeing and especially you know taking into consideration that the parking reduction isn't actually as significant sort of as it reads on paper the tandem parking spaces I use those at my office they're legitimate parking spaces in my opinion um and then I also thought that the floor plan and the you know the way you have the building relating to the surrounding streets and communities made a lot of sense um I do hope that you continue to look towards um making the facade more unique and interesting I think that you know we're at a very early stage and it's mostly massing but it would be great to see

[48:00] some um something more Dynamic happening sort of with the roof line and railings that are that were starting to be shown I don't think so matters uh Lauren's comments are spot on um I would add that this is exactly the kind of project I'd love for us to automatically be referencing tabs input with such a focus on Mobility Innovation and reduction of car use and really trying to innovate on how people move around the community differently and the uniqueness of this space I'd love to get tabs input just uh because of those issues and just furthermore again automatically we'd like to get tabs input on things that are so Mobility focused that would be my love going forward versus having to ask for it when we find these unique awesome projects so thank you thanks and I'll just call myself and echo or agree with what my colleagues have said and just to say I do support the parking reduction I think given the incredible wealth of services accessible by foot and bike and Transit here the

[49:01] parking reduction is absolutely supportable and then just as you know you're going to have to be creative with the transportation demand management plan so looking forward to seeing what you come up with there that second car share spot sound like a great idea for example so throw that there if we do want to refer to tablet believe that requires a motion so is that sorry Sandra do we have to do that formally yeah I make a motion to refer this to tab for there wisdom and input do you have a second no second good tara what about dab it's already being referred to dab excellent because I agree with Lauren on more unique architecture than some of our newer develops mints would be great great interest okay and I'll just add I'll

[50:00] just call myself and as a comment there that I think the place for them to focus is on the TDM plan right rather than connections Transportation connections suck okay so we have a motion to refer this to tab with second all in favor raise your hands and that's seems to be unanimous oh I can't see Juni but Junior do you want to just say I or nay yes what do you want me to say uh just to refer for the referral to tab if say yes or no please if you wouldn't mind uh no I I I I welcome that I think that's great idea okay what kind she is a yes thank you thank you that's unanimous then and with that I believe we are done with this item Danica question oh yeah sure so can we clarify when these are going to go to Tab and dab because I think there was a project recently where we looked at them at concept review and then we had another review later on and we hadn't heard from those boards yet by

[51:01] the time they came back in front of us so I just want to make sure that these will be going to Tab and dab before they come back to us I defer to planning staff on timing to Charles or Chandler do you want to address that sure um thanks very much for the question um they'll go likely to dab and tab after they initially submit their application for site review so um by the time it gets to an approval phase and comes before both planning board and city council for an eventual call up or a hearing they'll have been reviewed by both of those entities thank you great thanks for that Charles and just before we wrap up Danica did you need anything else or was that clear oh no we appreciate your time we know that this is a small But Mighty project and that's why we're here in sight and use review so um we appreciate you taking the time to weigh in on it as we

[52:01] will Journey forward and see you after Tab and dab thank you see you then thanks Lee all right well that brings us the end of that check-in so Emily if we can go to our public hearing please yes absolutely mayor so next we have our public hearing item that is number five on our agenda item 5A is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8569 approving supplemental Appropriations to the 2023 budget and setting forth related details so uh Council as our team gets settled here I'll say um uh atbs or no stranger to council there are times when we bring some special adjustment to base forward today's will focus on some of the Appropriations under arpa and we'll have some discussion there we'll also be looking at an ass that you had made of us for

[53:00] arts and culture funding Library budget revisions and as you see out in the audience quite a few uh leaders in our city both department heads and other city leaders across the across the different organizations uh departments sorry um you will see that there's a lot of conversation to have particularly as we talk about general climate initiatives and the recent climate tax so have I given you enough time to get settled you did thank you very much nicely done all right uh good evening Council thanks Nuria that was a great introduction I'm Mark Wolfe our budget officer I will take you through a little bit of an overview of the special adjustment to base as Nuria Nuri mentioned uh you're familiar already we bring adjustments to the budget annually there are two regularly scheduled adjustments in typically in May and November sometimes we bring you special ones this is a

[54:01] special one depending on circumstances tonight that is because of the arpa funding as mentioned so we were doing some reappropriations and appropriating tranche 3 initiatives which will include guaranteed income so we'll have a discussion around that we are appropriating 15.4 million in arpa dollars we will talk briefly about arts and culture as mentioned I'll walk you through a couple changes to the library budget for this year related to voter action in November and then some additional security measures taking advantage of the special adjustment coming to us now and then we'll have a discussion about our climate tax including our Wildfire resilience efforts so for those that would like to see the numbers mention the arpa appropriation we have the hundred thousand for arts and culture Library security and Library fund uh budget Gap funding I'll speak

[55:00] more to that a little over 500 000 there we have a one-time transfer as we'll describe in more detail where we're taking the utility the former utility occupation tax and the dedicated revenues reserves from bag fee revenues and transferring them to the climate tax that we have the ability to make expenditures out of one place so all of that is from the general fund we're also reducing the general fund appropriation and making climate initiative expenditures out of that new climate tax fund so just some administrative moving around of money there reflected in the general fund and then the the remainder of the adjustment comes in the climate tax fund or the newly retitled climate tax fund where we need to add the additional appropriation for 2023 to reflect the new revenues coming in and we'll speak more to the uses of those funds all right so starting out this evening

[56:01] we will talk about arpa we had a long arpa discussion uh in December that was um our fourth touch point with Council uh related to the American Rescue plan act funds that the city received a little over 20 million dollars we talked about our general framework and process for decision making all the way back in June of 2021 in August we had initial recommendations for for tranche one in February of last year we talked about tranche 2 and discussed some of the preliminary recommendations around tranche 3 and then we concluded our arpa initiatives in December of last year with uh feedback on the tranche 3 recommendations and ultimately removing those forward with the appropriation of funds this evening and just as a reminder we have a lot of exciting initiatives in this last round of arpa funding which represents our

[57:02] most significant investment utilizing the arpa dollars two and a half million strengthening our mental and behavioral behavioral health safety net 1.5 million in child care capacity and Industry support three million to support a second mortgage program at Ponderosa a half a million a support winners Sheltering 1.2 million to continue to support small businesses and economic recovery programming we reallocated the public health Reserve four hundred thousand dollars approximately to continue to support basic needs in the community and 150 000 to support arts and culture and last but not least funding to support the guaranteed income pilot program at 2.75 million council did ask at that December meeting to get a little bit more information on the details of that pilot program before making those Appropriations and with that we'll have Elizabeth Crowe

[58:00] come up and she will walk you through the pilot project thank you Mark and good evening Council Elizabeth Crowe serving the city with the housing and Human Services Department you heard our director Kurt fernhawber last week at the midterm check-in share our 2023 HHS mantras work with joy and we try to do that every day and I'm really pleased to be here tonight give you the update on the guaranteed income project joining us virtually if you do have questions for them as well are Jordan mcginn and Aleister Scott who are with impact charitable there are project management consultants and hopefully they are they are joined as panelists so if when it comes to q a if you have anything for them they're available as well next slide please so just for a review again uh kind of overlaying on the schedule or the

[59:00] timeline that Mark shared City staff proposed this project back in 2022 with the support from many non-profit Community leaders our community connectors and many other community members because we see guaranteed income programs ability to enable longer lasting Financial stability and security for community members struggling to make ends meet while there are many terms to to define the concept guaranteed income is that term of art there are other terms that include basic income direct cash assistance but we have chosen to for the moment kind of stick with that that term because it links us to the Mayors for a guaranteed income Network among others it's a network that is really expanded exponentially as mayor Brockett can attest to more than 100 Mayors all over the country and a network of more than staff members and leaders who are working on more than 40 pilots and there

[60:00] are other networks including one here in Colorado that bring together other organizations agencies and philanthropists all really centered on promoting and testing this concept and applying and benefiting from the results what we continue to hear as staff from community members non-profit Partners is the power of positive transformation that this kind of project can bring in addition to the financial resist assistance that is very restricted limited use one time only which we already provide either directly or through our partners this type of direct cash assistance is really rooted in that relationship and trust that gives community members the freedom to make the decisions as to how to spend their income we believe that community members families households know best how to do that and since our last update I would also note that many Boulder Community members are actually are maybe experiencing even

[61:00] greater financial hardship with the unwinding of covid-19 Public Health orders that can come with less funding per household for SNAP benefits or food benefits there may be gaps as people are re-enrolling for health benefits given those changes the County's emergency assist rental assistance program is winding down so there's just a lot of need in the community and we're continuing to see ourselves and through our non-profit partners that greater need and the need of people in expanding income ranges right people who are still accessing food benefits reaching out for other forms of assistance who've never had to do so before next slide so I'm really pleased to introduce to you via the photo uh our community task force seated back in January nine community members selected from an applicant pool of 60. we're very pleased about that their names are Silas Atkins

[62:02] Shelby Bates magali Botello Nicole Borelli Kelly Cuevas Sheila Davis indu dahal rinchen India Love and Ruby Lopez and as we desired and his Council desired this really is a group that reflects that lived experience a very diverse set of experiences everyone stating that they have multiple connections either themselves living with low income and Boulder working with people who do and who are experiencing a wide range of systemic disparities so this is really the group that we did and are hearing from and we're really really happy about that they have been working really hard with us hard work and hard work to really walk through some really challenging issues and help us make decisions that we know are going to benefit many people and also leave some folks out and we'll talk about that in just a moment I also just want to note that throughout

[63:00] the process in addition to hearing from them about specific design elements with a guaranteed income project they're also really sharing their desire for what this Boulder Community can and should look like and we feel myself and others on our staff team really committed to helping amplify those voices so you know some of those concepts are the frustration that people feel when they're repeatedly asked to prove their poverty or feel as though poverty is being politicized kind of with whatever way the political winds are blowing from one election to another really wanting that to see a day when people living out just outside Boulder experience the same quality and compassionate level of services that people have inside the city when we no longer experience the burden of isms in Boulder and of course there are many and we just really appreciate their transparency and and Trust in us to help Elevate their voices and we expect that

[64:01] to continue beyond beyond this pilot so now I would like to share some of the details that we've been working on for the project the first step and you can click through I'm a big fan of animations um these immediate outcomes and intermediate outcomes that we've defined in in what we call the theory of impact for the project it just defines what is the positive change that we actually want to see and reflecting back to the presentations we had last year in the study session in May and then again in December our HHS Mission kind of the broad goals that we have the long-term outcomes for our community include things like reducing the poverty rate in the city we don't expect to see that from a two-year pilot project and so this theory of impact really provides a much more specific set of outcomes that we hope people participants themselves will experience in the short term or immediately within

[65:02] months perhaps and then a set of intermediate outcomes which kind of stack on those immediates if you can click through please mark thank you that are really the next steps so if an immediate outcome is a decrease in debt hopefully over the course of the pilot project we'll have more community members actually able to make that transition from decreasing debt to increasing savings going from the decreased stress and worry and anxiety to positive mental health and overall Wellness Improvement and throughout that outcome of having a dignified experience is something that we want people to experience from the very moment they hear about this opportunity and apply all the way through if they're selected onto the to the completion and those outcomes and those that you see here more of the community level are really coming from other pilot

[66:01] projects right and we we see some of these same outcomes and programs that we currently fund and support here already in Boulder so not a lot new there but we also want to see how those outcomes on the intermediate and immediate follow-through to community level impact and what you see here then is even broader sense of Economic Security and reduction in financial hardship that can come about for example if people have a little bit more of a cushion so that if and when that Financial that emergency comes they've got actually something put away they're more able to withstand that kind of financial shock and usually it takes around four hundred dollars to be able to have a household sustain that kind of that kind of shock um it also um we see here the potential for community members to be less Reliant perhaps on emergency assistance needs

[67:01] note that this project and other Pilots are designed to be a supplement to any other current social safety net so our goal is not to have people say I don't need snap I don't need to be on health benefits anymore but with those things that I might need now I'm also in a better position but can people who are participating potentially not need as much of that emergency financial assistance we hope so and that third bullet point also gets back to that that really kind of larger concept of what is our social contract as a city government with the people we serve who are experiencing low income can we put in place and help perpetuate a cycle of trust where we know people are making good decisions making the right decisions according to their needs and they see the city government as being more responsive understanding better what they're looking for and what they need there are of course many assumptions that are baked into this theory of

[68:01] impact we have to assume uh because how can we otherwise that our economy on the macro level is going to be relatively stable we certainly hope that the pandemic doesn't take another turn for the worse we certainly understand that systemic disparities here today are not going to vanish they're still with us and any one of those things are really larger and beyond our control but obviously could impact the outcomes that any ex any particular participant experiences or we might as a community so we just want to keep that in mind lastly we know that any one participant could experience outcomes in these Community impacts in a very different way but we hope that this will be somewhat of a norm and a trend so next slide more click-throughs is going to as it did in the memo describe a little more of the details about what that direct cash assistance would look

[69:00] like uh so basically uh first decision uh was how long are we going to do this for and the consensus is 24 months that has been a best practice and really good positive impact from other Pilots um one of the reasons is that it gives people more time to make that transition from taking care of the basic needs that decrease in debt to actually thinking forward doing some planning being able to make decisions for example about work about education I'm taking some risks if you will and the longer that we're able to provide the assistance the more people are able to do that in terms of frequency the best practice there also is twice per month that aligns with how many people who work get paid it's possible that when we set this up we'll be able to give some flexibility to community members who participate who would like to have a

[70:00] different Cadence or frequency But ultimately where we would start is by providing it twice per month the next we've landed on 500 per month um there are two we did a lot of scenarios with the community task force to combine the amount how many people we'd like to have ultimately be able to participate the length and the money that we have currently in the bucket if we're successful as staff and raising more money getting more Investments That Could increase there are many community members that are really interested in providing more than 500 because of the cost of living here and many Pilots do but we want to start with at least the Assumption it would be 500. and then lastly just reinforcing again that the terms will be unconditional and unrestricted and next slide getting into the eligibility criteria was really one of the more challenging

[71:01] conversations again I mentioned it was a lot of hard work and hard work for our task force members the realization that anything we decide many people are going to benefit but out of tens thousands of community members who could be eligible 200 then suddenly seems like a low number and so that was really just I really want to acknowledge the hard work that they did kind of working through how to decide who might be in and who might get left out of this opportunity um so ultimately we're really looking for a sweet spot at the intersection of expected outcomes for the pilot which are those outcomes in the theory of impact the objectives of guaranteed income generally and then the community needs in gaps and when we think specifically about those Community needs and gaps it is of course the high cost of living here in Boulder things like inflation and the impact on affording basic needs the

[72:01] impacts that many community members again are going to feel with the unwinding of the covid benefits that have been in place and the disproportionate impact on community members who face all sorts of other types of marginalization and discrimination layered on top of that of course are the still like really wanting to have a process that is dignified that is a little bit different than people having to continually reapply to provide all sorts of detailed verification and also to really cast as wide and that as possible there were some scenarios that we played out with input from the task force members that focused on very specific populations as well as wanting to serve as many in the general low-income public as possible so with the next slide we'll just share again as as is in the memo um some of the details that we were working on a couple of these things are are

[73:01] probably well maybe considered no-brainers uh there needs to be residency in the city of Boulder um covet impacted that's a bit of an arpa requirement and we get the verification for that so far has been pretty pretty easy sometimes we just ask people as we did with the coronavirus Relief Fund our you coveted impacted under a certain income level the treasury Department actually expects and assumes that your covet impacted so that's not a high hurdle but we did have some conversation and got some great input from the task force members about that regarding age we're going to focus on 18 and up there are pilot projects that focus on teens focus on youth aging out of foster care those are populations that our task force members really felt strongly about wanting to help and that can add in a whole different layer of complexity if we want to serve them as

[74:00] well as other people in the general more General low-income population and so what we're going to do is focus on that 18 and up age group and really make sure we're doing really great Outreach to through organizations we partner with to community members directly in those different populations so that they have the opportunity and then I definitely want to focus a minute on the the income eligibility which is the trickiest one trying to land on what part of our low-income population could benefit from this is really was really challenging and at the moment so I'll say that we're not quite done with those conversations we definitely feel as though the the high end should be 60 percent Ami and note that the self-sustainable self-sufficiency standard for Boulder County for a family of three is actually around 99 thousand dollars so that's a

[75:01] gap between where the federal poverty level is around 20 000 all the way up to 99 000 are people who are we would consider to be a need in experiencing Financial challenges um so we're going to have continue to have some conversation with the task force we also got great input from a subject matter expert focus group on this topic a couple other kind of areas of context to help us land on that income level is that Boulder County is also using some of its arpa funding for a direct cash assistance program do we want to be the same as or do we actually want to be complementary to that how will community members understand the distinction between these programs the good news is that again we know that whatever we decide people are really going to benefit from this and that for people who are not included we know that there are other services available in this community already and we're continuing we're planning on continuing

[76:01] all of that next so here's some of the next steps and this is the last slide and just to let you know again the memo includes some more background information and resources or examples of that that would be happy to make available to council if you're interested and we're going to be meeting later this month actually next week and then again later in the month with the task force again to finalize eligibility start getting their input on applications verification these are things we've already been talking about in our staff team and with subject matter experts we also are going to get going on the request for proposals and service agreement models for evaluators now that we know what our impact is once we determine that eligibility criteria we want to get them going right away because what they their guidance and how

[77:02] we would measure to the outcomes measured to the impacts is really important to to put in place as soon as possible we're also going to be trying again to reach out to some other investors most Pilots have a combination of Municipal dollars or government dollars private foundations individual contributors corporations and that's our goal here as well to really make this a broader project that has a greater chance of sustainability if we choose to keep it going after the pilot lastly we're still aiming at summer 2023 that feels close and far away at the same time and so um we've got again a great consultant partners with impact charitable um and hope that this update any of the other answers to questions you may have will give you as council members the confidence in this approach so we can move forward thank you

[78:04] I think we'll go through the presentation and then we'll get all the questions at once if that's okay all right so the next piece of uh direction we received from Council back in December uh related to arpa was on arts and culture funding so just to remind you the context here uh council did support the additional 150 000 as we reallocated the public health Reserve that we had set aside with tranche 1 of arpa funding that 150 000 for arts and culture specifically supported a third round of grants for the artist hiring incentive and additional funds for the venue affordability grant program Council also provided direction to us to identify an additional hundred thousand dollars in advance of this adjustment to bring total arts and culture additional support to 250 000 and to consult with the Arts Commission on the use of funds

[79:00] uh prior to this adjustment the Arts commission did support staff recommendations from December in the use of the reallocated public health Reserve dollars and there was additional additional recommendations from the commission related to the total amount of funding they did request an additional ninety two thousand dollars so that would bring the total level of support to 342 000 that is uh with the purpose of supporting five general operating support grants for organizations that scored well but did not receive funding in the last round of awards that additional 92 000 just as a node is not currently included in in this budget adjustment so Council would have to add that amend the ordinance that is before you this evening and we did visit with the financial strategy committee as we usually do with the adjustment to base one of the questions that came up is how we're doing in arts and culture budget support since the acceptance of the community cultural plan which was

[80:00] accepted in 2018 the cultural plan did have funding targets for 2018 2021 and 2024 it's represented in the red line there you can see the the target funding we were fairly close to that Target in 2018 the 2018 budget there was a temporary dip in sales and use tax that impacted general fund all sales and use tax supported funds we were making some progress against that Target until covet hit and like many areas of our budget we fell behind our targets for funding and then we began to catch back up with 2022 and 23. arpa has certainly helped us do that but you'll see with the combination of our our budget our capital budget did the arpa funding and then the supplemental funding that is under consideration this evening we're at about 2.6 million proposed for 2023 with the supplemental funding compared to that two million dollar 2024 Target called for in the cultural plan

[81:00] a little context there and I'll note that we have Matt schezansky if you have any additional questions that I can answer all right moving on to the library quickly again just context with the approval of the of the Library District we repealed the 0.33 dedicated Library Mill Levy that was projected to generate 1.4 million dollars of Revenue that was held in the library Fund in 2023 so we need to cover that Gap the good news is we were able to we are anticipating to be able to drain down Library fund fund balance to cover most of that Gap in 2023 some of that the fund balance in library fund was used to support the construction of North Boulder Library branch the remaining Gap is a little over three hundred thousand dollars projected for 2023 so we're recommending a supplemental appropriation of 350 000

[82:01] from the general fund to cover that Gap and I'll just note that our hope certainly subject to negotiation would be that the district would reimburse the city for for the provision of services in 2023 separate from the budget Gap issue the timing of this adjustment allows us to address the security enhancements that we discussed with Council back in January staff is expanding the existing security contract from three to seven security guards and adding Patrol of other library branches the additional amount of security funding needed and included in this adjustment is a little over two hundred thirty thousand all right and with that we will start talking about climate tax implementation and we will start with Jonathan Cohen great thanks Mark good evening mayor members of council community members I'm Jonathan Cohen and I am honored to serve as the Director of the climate initiatives department so I am actually going to be incredibly brief tonight before turning it over to the

[83:01] really smart folks that are sitting behind me to talk about the Wildfire element of tonight's conversation so uh first I want to start by describing why we're here to talk about the climate tax you might remember that last November Boulder voters supported two ballot measures related to our climate work first was to a that really looked to enhance and accelerate a lot of our investment and work around climate and resilience and the second was uh to provide the city the ability to actually issue debt and bond to capture additional revenues for bigger projects in the future if we choose to do so um so uh the the climate tax again took effect on January 1st of this year so it replaces and and Mark already made some of these comments so it was going to be a little repetition here but that climate tax replaces both the the former climate action plan tax and the utility occupation tax and that the tax is going to collect uh about 6.5 million dollars in revenues annually and that's levied

[84:00] on the current provider of electricity and natural gas in the city so again as I said the purpose of the tax is really to fund our communities ongoing and enhanced climate efforts and contribute that one point five million dollars annually to ongoing Wildfire resilience efforts so if you can go to the next slide uh actually go back one I'm sorry so again I think Mark covered a little bit of this and this is outlined in your memo I can go through these mechanics fairly quickly so tonight this special ATB is really intended to handle some of those housekeeping housekeeping items associated with the tax first the existing climate action plan fund will be renamed the climate tax fund I know that's not very creative but second the new tax revenues will increase by just over 4 million in appropriation and the associated accounts are going to be Consolidated and reorganized into that one new climate tax Fund in turn the general fund will decrease by a total of about 2.7 million dollars to reduce the expenditure appropriation and that was

[85:01] related to the utility occupation tax and the Disposable bag fee so in addition the general fund will provide that one-time transfer that Mark mentioned in that opening slide of 1.34 million to the in utility occupation tax reserves and about 775 000 indisposable bag fees reserves to The Climate tax fund so next slide so while it's not really the purpose of this conversation I did want to talk super briefly about our investment philosophy so the ballot measure has a fairly comprehensive or how to fairly comprehensive list of the measures that the tax would be intended to provide investments into and if you recall about a year ago was on February 22nd we had a great conversation with Council about the types of things that we think we would accelerate the types of funding that we would need to kind of move into the space of the big climate moves the things that we had identified that we didn't necessarily have revenue for at

[86:00] the time so we've shared this slide I think with Council a few times but generally speaking our investment is aligned with achieving our climate and related climate and energy related goals that are listed up on the screen here that's that there's no exception with the new funding but I do want to highlight that it's always been Our intention to provide direct benefits back into the community especially those that are most vulnerable to climate change driven impacts next next slide please this is also a slide I think Council has seen several times but it Bears a bit of repeating over the past few years we've really been been recalibrating our approach to climate work so of course we need to continue to prioritize those things that are represented on the left hand side those are our climate stabilization efforts things that we can see direct reduction in emissions but we know full well that we need to integrate resilience and of course center around that design principle of equity that's really the future of climate action not just here in Boulder but every Community

[87:00] is really shifting into this space I also want to get into this a little bit more in the next section but we do know that the future is going to be fundamentally shaped by climate driven impacts and disasters and Wildfire is no exception to that and the City of course is a primary provider of public services and so we're having to turn an increasing amount of attention and resource towards addressing some of these these impacts and we also had to again I want to reiterate rate this time and time again just to recognize that our investments really need to be directed to those that are at least at least responsible for some of those impacts but most vulnerable to those impacts at the same time so again that's why I think our staff resources are really being dedicated to those resilience efforts moving forward I also want to make sure I mentioned this at your your check-in last week it's Our intention obviously I think Council saw a lot of detail around some of our Wildfire work that is intended to be

[88:01] invested in in the upcoming year in particular but it is also Our intention to really work with Community to really understand what their needs are because they are best suited to tell us what those needs are so that's part of the conversation that we want to have moving forward so um before I again turn the mic over to Brian I really want to appreciate this cross-cutting work that's been taking place over the past year or so to really build up these teams internally to think think about how we address these issues have broader resilience but specifically around Wildfire so I'm going to turn the mic over to Brian Oliver he can talk through some of those near-term things that you did see in the IP that came to you a couple of weeks ago and then hopefully you'll have some questions and we can look back if you have any on the climate tax or specifically Wildfire thanks thanks Jonathan as we transition just a reminder to speak slowly because we got some translation going on thanks Jonathan uh Brian Oliver I am your division chief of Wildland Fire for the fire department

[89:00] um and so here to talk about the you know special adjustment to base as it relates to our walk by resilience efforts um clearly you know the city and all of our partners across departments and even outside the city we do a lot of a lot of work for Wildfire resilience uh we'll try not to bore you with details I'll just reference you to the information packet that you got on 216. that should be you know take it take you down a dive of some of those programs and projects and some of those details but uh you know the climate tax is is really going to provide us some enhancements to all those programs that are already moving forward one of the things that is not really part of the enhancements but something that we've developed to help prioritize and task some of these programs is the development of a core team so it's across departments City manager's office fire department osmp utilities climate initiatives Parks and Rec office of disaster management disaster management sorry Mike Communications and engagement and we all

[90:00] meet very regularly to start prioritizing and moving some of these efforts forward so that we're looking at Wildfire resiliency not just from departmental silos but as a city as a whole and how we can you know leverage each other's talents and abilities and budgets to help reduce some of these effects of wildfire with that we couch all of these prioritizations with the national cohesive strategy that's outlined for while in fire it is really kind of our foundational doctrine that that drives where we want to prioritize our efforts next slide please within that National cohesive strategy is are these three strategic goals which is resilient landscapes fire adapted communities and safe and effective Wildfire response these things are are really the tenets of what guide our efforts next slide please so again fire adapted communities what we're really speaking to is you know that we want to be able to withstand or

[91:00] or be resilient from those impacts right we live in a fire adapted ecosystem everywhere outside the city in fact it requires fire to strive so fire is inevitable we're going to have it what we need to do is prepare for it and be able to respond and lower its impacts what we're really speaking to is is education and Outreach here home hardening you know fuels modification directly you know adjacent to structures and improvements things like that it's really what we're speaking to with fire adapted communities next slide please so enhancements with the uh with the 1.5 million for the special ATB that we're really looking at is some additional staff capacity to support that Outreach effort and it really gets into supporting and enhancing our home assessment programs specifically providing some more incentive programs some assistance to homeowners in the form of maybe grants connecting them to volunteers and non-profit organizations to help them do some of that mitigation work specifically for those that that

[92:00] might not have the the resource to do that and do those things and then the really big one is the development of a community welfare protection plan we have one that we authored in 2007 clearly quite out of date so we're doing a serious revamp of that particular plan and that will be kind of our driving document to start moving forward and getting the community's input on where these priorities lie and what those values are because it really is a Community Driven document to help us move forward next slide please again safe and effective follow up by response we do all kinds of things in that space you know the fire department along with our other partners um the you know we're talking about standards of cover and our response protocols uh agreements with other jurisdictions that have city-owned property within their within their response areas and making sure that we're all mobilizing and responding to fires in a very cohesive and effective manner our our ask there is not very big next slide

[93:00] please is really just some technology advancements to better our response decision making looking at some weather monitoring and some early detection cameras just so we can get some better data-driven decision-making tools to ensure that we're responding appropriately and have the appropriate staff for the for the problem and then the third is resilient Landscapes and I'd turn it over to director Burke thank you Brian uh Dan Burke open space and Mountain Parks director for the city of Boulder and nice to see you all and great to speak with you last week about this subject matter as well uh thank you Brian I am going to be representing uh the third uh theme or strategy within the city's framework and that is resilient Landscapes and you can see here on the slide that the definition of resilient Landscapes our Landscapes that are resilient to fire related disturbances in accordance with management objectives and much of this

[94:01] uh strategy area for the city of Boulder is focused on the natural lands the 50 000 Acres or so of forests grasslands riparian areas Wetlands that the city owns and manages and those beautiful landscapes that sort of embrace and Surround our community areas um really the when it comes to managing and careful in an intentional and comprehensive stewardship of these natural lands there's really two primary objectives first is to enhance and maintain the biodiversity and the health of these ecosystems because what you find is that if you have a healthy Rich biodiverse ecosystem they in an attorney are more resilient and more resilient to drought and Wildfire but the second strategy of this comprehensive stewardship area is to actually mitigate and minimize the risk of severe and catastrophic Wildfire on the system and

[95:01] and to our communities and as Brian mentioned just previously we and Colorado and our natural systems here specifically are fire adapted natural communities they actually have grown up if you will with fire in mind and fire is actually an integral part of keeping these ecosystems healthy so from a management strata uh context it's an it's an interesting Paradox in which fire is an important component to maintaining a resilient healthy ecosystem yet we would want to avoid catastrophic and severe wildfire and so that is the management sort of sweet spot that we're after when it comes to developing a comprehensive management strategies for these natural lands um the other point I want to make before I talk a little bit about enhancements for 2023 is the fact that uh we have a we have a rich history of managing for

[96:00] ecosystem health and for uh mitigating fire risks on our system uh really decades Long's worth uh we have and we have a big collaborative uh group across the city and across the region and across the state and with the federal government when it comes to that so a lot of Rich experience so really the goal of the climate tax fund enhancements is to take what we already have and look how look at those areas where we can enhance them and add to them and if and analyze if there's any gaps so if we can go to the next slide please our cross-departmental team which was assembled uh with the direction of the city manager in the fall of 2022 to look collaboratively across the area when this tax uh asked we got to work and was looking at what is sort of now that we're already two or three months into this year what in the nine months can we utilize to put enhancements right on the ground

[97:00] immediately sort of those shovel ready product uh projects and in the area of uh uh um resilient Landscapes on the screen here the additional enhancements we want to prioritize those to expanding the scope and speed in which at which fuels management efforts are completed on City lands and this will be enhancing and expanding increase in our work on on Force thinning on prescribed grazing on prescribed fire and uh within our forest and on our grasslands on weed management and with Ditch management so those are areas that we think we can get prepared to hit the ground running with the new climate tax funds over the nine months and really put it instantly into work in regards to the the resilient Landscapes strategy area so next slide please so just to kind of wrap it up for this portion of the presentation uh just to

[98:01] emphasize that our next steps is to obviously continue all of the current city-wide and uh partnership work that we're doing uh in regards to Wildfire resilience implement the enhancements that have been identified by this cross-departmental group in regards to all three of these strategy areas that Brian and I have gone through and third I just want to call out again to continue to maintain and enhance our collaboration and our Partnerships we cannot do this in a silo osmp as a department or fire rescue as a department or climate initiatives it's cross-cutting it takes cross-departmental work and it takes those collaborative efforts across the region with our County Partners with our regional partners and our and our national Partners so that's what we're prepared to go to work on and uh thank you for your time and with that I'm going to turn things over to Mark again thanks Dan that is it for us we are ready for questions and actually just before we get to questions I wanted

[99:00] to recognize that lovely gem that is a city of Boulder and Boulder County person and director Mike chard who is joining us as well and just noting that he is in the audience if you have questions for him thanks for being here Mark and appreciate the partnership Mike sorry I said Mike yep um thank you for those comprehensive presentations really appreciate that questions for City staff Nicole yeah thank you so much for the presentations I had uh the bulk of my questions were around the guaranteed income pilot program and so I don't know if that means Elizabeth you are up it does so one of the things that I was wondering about will be tracking outcomes from the folks who are receiving the funds well we have a control group of people who applied that we are also going to be tracking

[100:00] it's a great question um at the moment we're thinking not to go the control and rather focus on a pre-post evaluation a couple of reasons for that um there are a lot of Pilots that are currently taking place that have a pretty strong very very robust and I would add very costly evaluation process some of those results are ones that you might already be familiar with like from the Stockton California project there are a dozen or so um I think even more than that actually through the mayor's for a guaranteed income Network in the center for guaranteed income research so we've gotten and we'll be getting a lot of really strong kind of control group based evaluation results we're not quite sure we're going to see a lot that's drastically different from here in Boulder but to those other projects the evaluation costs for those can be just a

[101:01] half a million by itself and so at the moment we're taking a different approach when this is also repeated in other Pilots that is much more doing pre-post surveys really getting that storytelling getting the experiences of the community members out without going that route thank you and then I was just wondering about what happens if somebody moves while they're in yeah that's a great question as well um and I I'll answer that a bit and then Jordan or Alistair if they're available I might have something that they would want to add it is one of those next steps that will have to have a pretty comprehensive kind of policy for the project that could be a scenario people could move out of the community they could have a pretty substantial change someone who participates hopefully this doesn't happen could could pass away there's just a whole bunch of different scenarios to plan for

[102:00] fortunately in this area again I've said it before but there's an advantage to not being first where there's some really great templates there but that's definitely one of those next steps so we can plan for um if not all most of those eventualities and still have a really good program thank you yeah um I just wanted to make sure I think we talked about this before but this won't impact the other benefits that folks are receiving is that right that's that's correct that that is to say that um people who participate um it's possible that they would have some impact to benefits that the city couldn't control for in those scenarios there are some really great tools that have been developed by the Atlanta Federal Reserve for example that enable kind of calculators so that people when they come into the program before they say yes 100 I'm participating can provide them scenarios and say actually

[103:01] you may be paying more in your rent you may be impacted in this way the numbers that we've run and part of these scenarios were how we landed on the five hundred dollars um the that amount is one that even if there is some negative impact for example a rent amount might increase there's still an overall pretty substantial Net game but running those scenarios ahead of time and being able to tell people fully with all transparency we can't guarantee it but this is where some you might see some impacts would be their opportunity to say yes I absolutely want to go ahead or know I'm a little uncomfortable with that I'd rather not thank you and then what counts as a resident so if someone for example doesn't have stable housing if they're sleeping on the couch of a friend is that somebody who would be um a potential candidate for this program

[104:00] so we're at the moment Gathering and talking not only with among staff but also with some of our those subject matter experts organizations like FR or our colleagues at the county to see like how how are we already addressing that situation some other examples include the Marshall fire where we had to verify whether or not you were actually in a home that was damaged in a particular you know area so um is it a house what defines a household what defines a family is that include roommates does it not so we're actually having these conversations right now and those are some of the immediate next steps what kind of verification what kind of definitions will we go with for things like Family household resident it seems straightforward but it's really not um so we'll yeah looking at a bunch of different sources before we land on that definition and make that again very clear in the application process thank

[105:00] you and last one um why why exclude students from this can you speak to that especially sure income yeah so what we have right now is um a focus on excluding full-time students um we just know that number one there are a number of people in our community who are students full-time part-time who are definitely you're you've you've lived here for a long time you plan on staying um and you're really experiencing low income but we also know that um there could be a whole additional set of students who don't show as having income but they're not necessarily low income they may be still on parents benefits you know just a completely different scenario even though they may not show you know as having any or much income so this is one way to try to solve for that um I don't think any of us believe that

[106:00] it's a perfect solution but to really try to keep as much of the focus as possible on households that really are experiencing low income that don't have other family members or other situations as someone who's in that age range of just out of high school here for a few years in college and doesn't maybe intend to have Boulder as their permanent home yep and for grad students as well though it would exclude them too um that may be true okay thank you okay Lauren um thank you for the very thorough presentation what it looks like you'll be looking at a pretty wide range of incomes in terms of who might be eligible for this program are we going to try and make sure that there are

[107:00] are like a percentage from different ranges or um how do you plan on looking at that or is that still to be determined uh still to be determined is the short answer the slightly longer answer is that we we've actually been talking about on the one hand focusing on that 30 to 60 percent Ami bracket which is um and and there are several reasons for that including those tend to be the folks who are really already on that benefits Cliff a lot of benefits really on only eligible for people who are lower than 30 percent Ami up to 50 and and again like that's a population that we know is experiencing a lot of challenges right now um it's not really a level of income that can sustain doing well thriving here in the city just because of our affordability issues and also just with

[108:01] other changes that are coming even just this spring May really feel that impact much more there's also an argument to be made to to go lower obviously those are people a lot of whom were already seeing pretty regularly and at high numbers in our non-profit agencies and Direct Services so that's one answer to the question is we're still kind of trying to figure out how low and you know how's what's that specific income range will be focused on there are a couple of other ways that we can actually address the situation you're talking about not only by income but other areas where we really want to be as Equitable as possible so that can come in the process of After People apply anyone who's eligible they're being pretty typically utilizing a randomized lottery system that would actually select the participants and they're that's a process that allows us to actually wait

[109:00] w-e-i-g-h-t um different characteristics or identities so for example we know that we have a lot of racial disparity in our community based on race ethnicity is that something that we want to actually look at and say if you identify you know by your race or ethnicity perhaps your gender identifier ability or disability we don't want to Stack so much on that now we have a very complicated application process that requires lots of verification that would counter having that dignified process but it can be a way for us to really ensure that we're equitably getting to people who are oftentimes left out of assistance programs like this and and that may be one of those ways we can try to address equitably the income identities if we have a kind of a larger pool I hope that made sense

[110:00] thank you um you also mentioned that the county is going to have some programs that you're don't want to duplicate are there any particular ways that's currently affecting your thinking on what how this program might be shaped yeah we are um yes and no so I think what we've already established in terms of age eligibility kind of the terms the amount those we feel like right now are pretty fixed and the county is still thinking about you know where they're going to land on some of those areas one of the considerations is if um for example by income range by kind of household type of household if we have two programs that are going at least overlapping somewhat in time frame how can we make it really easy for people to understand what they're

[111:01] eligible for and what they apply for here in Boulder elsewhere in the county it won't as much be an issue because I'll have one option through the county but here it is a consideration you know and and another is do we want to have two data sets that overlap for the same population and kind of learn more about the same population or do we want to complement and have the advantage of two different data sets and the same is you know could be true even for other projects like Denver basic income which is only focused on homeless community members so again a longer answer but the short of it is that there are a lot of balls in the air there we're in really close communication with the county on it and non-profit agencies are kind of advising on both sides so confident that we'll be able to come up with a with the right decision thank you any other questions from Council

[112:05] on this one subject okay okay so my question is for either Brian or Mike with regarding sort of our Wildfire resiliency I'm glad that we have the resources to certainly invest in Greater resiliency my question centers around um infrastructure nothing is cheap in the world of firefighting I gather and certainly maybe wild and so I'm wondering is there shorter medium or long-term plans in building the infrastructure capacity through this tax or other means with regards to maybe wild wild and firefighting vehicles or other sort of larger infrastructure I'm just wondering how that side complements our overall resiliency strategy and balance on both sides sorry if that's a bit dense of a question it's a pretty good question and and I think where we are with with the initial ATB in this initial thing is we're just now starting to develop what those strategies are going to be and and where we need to take it in the next one three

[113:01] five years you know right now with with a pretty quick turnaround um we wanted to just enhance current programs but some of that infrastructure we're looking at right now is some uh Advanced like weather monitoring technology again detection cameras things like that and then moving probably into more of a figuring out our staffing model and building some of that in but as far as uh larger infrastructure Investments we really haven't made that leap just yet okay well I'm seeing no other questions let's turn to our public hearing we have one person signed up for that which is Lynn Siegel and so then you'll have three minutes to speak to us tonight time reps still sorry I don't know what else I can do I hover everywhere there's no place that it is at

[114:01] and I don't want this taking up my time so Lynn we just started the clock please proceed what Boulder needs are impact each person that's added to this community impact these would consist of all the things that were spoken of tonight climate action Wildfire resilience Rec Center's libraries meth disasters everything like so many things Open Space Mountain Parks were in a huge deficit in those funds as long as you're approving projects like 22 Pearl you're going to drive up the cost of housing here astronomically more than it is now yay 206. okay smaller units do not equal

[115:02] an equal amount of in Impact as for example 22 in Pearl versus papillos and these affect your bottom line our budget everything we spend in this city to use for our public um how this is happening when you've got 300 square feet and someone's living in it they are going to want to and they've got their bike and their dog in that 300 square feet as well they are going to want to get out of there they are going to want to go places and do things and when they do and they don't have a car because that 1700 to 2600 does not include a car and a car in Boulder a parking space is 897 dollars a month according to cajid and I want to know from you from city council what does a parking spot cost in Boulder

[116:00] because that's the bottom line here if you don't want cars in that parking spot how many homeless people can you fit in that parking spot how many you know in a 300 square feet you've got a three thousand dollar per month person living in that um and those spaces at 22nd and pearl are market rate as soon as they're as soon as the project is approved so it really doesn't matter if you've got these big giant condos that cost all kinds of money for someone because you've got this you've got an even worse tsunami of affordability coming up with now these new micro units wow my time went by micro units do not you know they are not the Panacea and lie Tech

[117:00] funds that you're getting from the federal government are just you're telling us it's extra Heights that concludes the public hearings so I will bring it back to council for discussion of the matter before us who would like to kick off our discussion okay there you go Lauren thank you there may be I still have a couple of questions I'm sorry um these are fire related questions um so in the fire adapted communities there was it spoke about reducing Wildfire Risk by one of the items was creating financing and Grant tools to assist homeowners and businesses and risk reduction efforts such as

[118:00] Roofing and Siding Replacements and I was wondering if in that we will be looking at exterior insulation as part of that just because that has multiple benefits in terms of you know reducing energy usage and also some of those products can also help with fire risk mitigation good question and and I think we'll get there currently you know again going with this this initial push is is to build that capacity right now there's there's no programs built and that's what that Staffing increases to do is to start developing those programs and looking into a lot of what what is the best bang for the buck and where can we do that that cross you know dimensional benefit right it's going to lower risk it's also going to lower energy costs things like that again that's part of that core teams uh calling is to do that across across the Departments and figure out what the best thing is so we don't have any answers yet but we're going to get there perfect

[119:01] thank you um in that okay on that point okay because you were talking about just the resources for residents on that sort of Home resiliency yeah unless you're continuing on that line I have a cross-departmental wildfire team question it might be in that speaker go for it okay I appreciate that um so it's kind of a question of order of operations with regards to where Lauren was because it's not just the home itself I think of also the landscaping and so thinking about you know removal of juniper and high fuel loads within close proximity to the home as a major resiliency uh aspect and if it and I hear you saying that we're trying to build that capacity to start to evaluate that I guess the question sort of circles back to us too do we want to be legislating that ahead of having that staff capacity or the financial resources to help those in need in order to get that ball rolling for maybe uh self um fulfilling of those ordinances and self-compliance more or less so it's kind of a question of whether or not you

[120:00] think that we'd have the cart before the horse to some extent because it's more than just the house it's still built in the landscape environment as well right that's a that's that's fair and I think where we're going to go it's it's funny you bring that up we're actually going to have a a pretty robust conversation at the core team on Monday about junipers and what our policy recommendations are going to be going going up the chain as far as do we need that ordinance or can we use the the carrot instead of the stick right can we can we give people the resources and help them help themselves because they want to do it or or are we going to need to you know an ordinance or some sort of legislative mandate that says Thou shalt and we're going to have that discussion next week and what I hear if you will council members is perhaps a desire from Council that as we have those conversations and the core team continues to move forward that if there are in fact ordinance changes or things that they want to bring to council that you are receptive to us bringing that as their appropriate and ready

[121:01] yeah I was also wondering if that cross-departmental team includes Transportation staff to make sure that as we work towards encouraging people to move away from single occupancy Vehicles you know we still have plans for how people evacuate safely and things like that that's interesting actually no Transportation isn't on the court team and maybe that's something we look at adding them to the table yeah and I'll say that originally when we thought of this cross-departmental team it really is focused on Wildfire resilience but the team absolutely as it continues to do its work and needs to fold additional members in they certainly are welcome to do that as we move forward thank you that's my question you have you have the floor so would you like to start comments yeah I'll I'll call on myself and then seeing no one else jump into the fort and say this you all have done a phenomenal job so really appreciate the detailed work

[122:02] and how we're absorbing and processing the additional resources that the voters have granted Us in the last election which we're very grateful to our voters and taxpayers thank you people of Boulder and so all kinds of wonderful initiatives going on really looking forward to seeing um progress on our Wildfire resiliency um but that's it for you okay sure uh which is of course a critical concern right now and we'll only get only get worse so uh just basically thank you and I support where we're going here Tara and then Nicole I want to I'm thinking back to when um I first got on Council and how Wildfire mitigation was and the uh Wildland Urban interface was one of our main concerns remember we said we wanted to prioritize that and how far we've come in just less than two years so thanks to the team everybody for all that you did and all you're doing Nicole

[123:01] yep just gonna Echo all the thanks to everybody here um I am just really thrilled by all these Investments that are going in here I think it really reflects some of the best of Our Community Values we've got Behavioral Health Child Care capacity manufactured housing support changes to procurement to focus on equity and inclusion which I really appreciate that one increases in art support Wildfire resilience thinking about energy Equity now and getting rid of single-use plastics there's so much good in here and I am so excited for where this is going to take us the only thing that I you know would love for us to consider and I'm fully supportive of of this I don't don't want to let this let anybody think that this will hold it back but I'd really like for us to think about how we can include students as we're thinking about the supports that we're giving to the community lots of our students who are here work in our restaurants and our other service Industries in our stores and their housing and food secure too and

[124:01] especially for graduate students they are very often no longer supported by their parents and yet they they don't have enough to get by in our city and and how how are we supporting people in those situations um I would just really love for us to be thinking about that because I think the people that at most impacts are the first generation students and those who are coming from families that don't have a lot of pre-existing wealth and they are very valuable members of our community as well so I would just really like for us to keep that in mind as we move forward as how how can we include students and especially their student workers and those who are supporting our community in other ways in our in being a part of our community and being able to exist here with some security too but thank you so much for all that work thanks cool Matt um we're in gushing hour um right now um so I yes we'll certainly echo my college I'll just say more specifically

[125:01] bureaucracy in government often gets the bad rap of not being Nimble not being agile not being able to quickly uh pivot to meet needs of their Community um this conversation tonight to me is sort of emblematic of the contrary um that we have been Nimble we have been able to adapt to the needs of our community as those needs are rapidly changing so I just want to give a lot of credit to the staff the city manager's office as well um to get us to a place where we can be nimble and adapt to the needs in our community so just great job to everyone thank you their comments perhaps emotion you've got Nicole go ahead sorry I just wanted to thank all the members of the guaranteed income pilot project for all of their hard work to get us to what is a very exciting program for our city so thank you um to all the folks who are here for that anybody else Juni thank you I just wanted to Echo the things as well based on the memo

[126:01] um the Wildfire resiliency program I welcome that I think that's great that's a necessity of seeing all the different fires that we have dealt with in Boulder County right not just Boulder itself in Boulder County that has impacted Us and other surrounding counties as well and also the guaranteed income is something that I'm very excited about as well and I and I'm grateful um you know that the city manager and the mayor has been working on on these on this project as well so thank you for that and I'm excited and I look forward to you know to seeing that coming to fruition and also seeing Community getting benefit and access to it so thank you so much thanks Judy Lauren yeah I also really appreciate these very thoughtful proposals the huge amount of behind the scenes work that they

[127:00] represent um and your patience with my questions um I would like to um motion that we adopt ordinance 85 69 and supplemental Appropriations to the 2023 budget a second opportunity got it well thanks for that Lauren any final comments before we go to a vote so Emily if we could do a roll call here please I believe of course we'll start the roll call on tonight's public hearing with council member folkerts yes friend yes council member Joseph yes yes spear yes whiner yes Yates yes

[128:01] mayor Brockett yes and councilman member Benjamin yes ordinance 8569 is hereby adopted all right well thanks again everybody for the phenomenal work by ourselves and by our partners and I'm looking forward to taking the next steps on the guaranteed income program and representing with the mayor's group so thanks for all your work on that it's gonna be an impressive program I know okay so we can now move on to our next item which is a matter from the city manager yes thank you mayor our next item is item 6A alternates for the intergovernmental affairs subcommittee thank you mayor and hopefully this will be a quick item there was some conversation a few weeks back about the possibility uh or the desire to have an alternate on the intergovernmental Affair subcommittee um I think in as I've continued to

[129:00] converse with very severe colleagues there was perhaps interest in other City appointed committees that perhaps people wanted to bring forward and so what we would recommend is because those committees are actually formally voted on they require in your rules to be noticed uh put on the agenda and voted on formally that we should also similarly vote for alternates in those committees that you so choose I don't think every committee necessarily needs to have an alternate although certainly if that is your desire we can do so and if it is the will of counsel we can work with CAC to schedule that and bring that forward again are you just looking to us for nod to say yes come back to us at a future meeting that would be perfectly lovely nod and say yes can you please do that yeah thumbs up okay I'm seeing some thumbs up over here uh very good so please do and Sandra yes thank you mayor

[130:01] I I just want to make sure and check in with uh Council to see if there's any interest in wanting to make any changes to the council rule to procedure um that would clarify the procedure that you are contemplating do you feel that it's necessary in order for us to do so I don't think it would hurt we're already doing some related to Mayor Pro tem so I could certainly bring those at the same time seems reasonable to me what do people think yeah getting nods I'm seeing nods so Rachel yeah I think it's fine um for at least a couple of the Committees it seems like it might be time sensitive so that's my only question is how quickly would we get to this like for uh legislative affairs that's that's um that expires in a couple months right thank you for the question uh as a member a friend I don't think that

[131:00] it would necessarily require passage of the council rules the procedure or change in order to to have that action but I am planning on bringing forward those changes to the council rules of procedure at the next business meeting so we could probably do them both at the same time so it's just two weeks then okay okay and then maybe just for cac's awareness like I think at least a couple that I'm thinking about are probably time sensitive thank you Council good that was easy all right now we have a couple Matters from the mayor and members of council yes thank you so much our next item is item 8A and that is a Downtown Vision plan yeah I might turn to my colleague Bob Yates here this was an invitation that he initially extended so I'm do you want to say a few words yeah thanks Aaron um just by way of background

[132:00] um we're about to hear a presentation of the Downtown Vision plan this is a plan that's been worked on for probably better part of a year but several members of City staff and actually several members of council the down downtown Pearl Street Mall I just celebrated its 45th anniversary and will is now creeping up on its 50th Anniversary so this is a very good time to be reflective of what downtown looks like not only on Pearl Street but the surrounding areas there's a couple of other things that are happening kind of at the same time we all might remember that about a year ago our voters approved an extension of the community culture safety and resilience tax which dedicated 12 million dollars towards um refreshing the Pearl Street Mall and redeveloping the Civic area so that money is being planned for expenditure by several members of City staff in partnership with the downtown Boulder partnership I think in a few weeks we're going to hear from our colleagues who are serving on the uh the downtown streets as public spaces committee and

[133:00] so so lots of Engagement around that we of course have a conference center coming in right up the hill from downtown and their our transportation staff has studied Mobility options there there as you'll hear in a second there are four downtown boards that worked on this as a matter of fact there are four council members actually worked on division plan you're about to hear uh Matt and um and Mark serve on the business Improvement District board turn and I serve on the downtown Boulder Community initiatives non-profit board and a lot of Staff members including Chris Jones who's here also tonight who I think can provide some context if you'd like the presentations can be by chip who's the CEO of those boards um and I think we're going to hear from Chip about the process and Community engagement about how this plan was put together some big Ideas embedded in the plan and some some Pathways for implementation there's no action by console type this is really an informational item but we wanted to to share with those members of council who didn't work on the plan and also the

[134:00] broader community who might be watching tonight and hear from chip on on what the plan looks like and maybe um express some enthusiasm so it's all yours Jim thank you so much Bob I really appreciate that and and thank you all for the opportunity to come share this work uh that as Bob mentioned many of you have been involved with we spent the bulk of last year having this conversation about division I'll we're going to speed through a lot of these slides if you can start by formally introducing yourself with your full name and your role please I will absolutely so go ahead and the next slide and I'll introduce my full name uh you can call me chip I'm I'm chip and the CEO of downtown Boulder partnership and as Bob mentioned we we are multiple organizations we we are not uh part of this city but we like to pretend we are we're very uh strong partners of this city uh we have a a number of organizations our business improvement district downtown Boulder partnership our community initiatives nonprofit and our community Advisory Board all working

[135:01] together in a lot of different capacities to make and keep downtown awesome uh through a number of efforts uh go ahead next slide um that this has been uh this is not a city plan uh the the vision plan is is not a plan of the city though uh it's a plan of the downtown Boulder partnership it would really not be what it is without the strong partnership and support of the city city council members uh as well as City staff so I really want to acknowledge the the gratitude for the support and partnership in the conversations uh for developing a plan for the community for our downtown um go ahead next slide I'm going to race through this so why did we do a vision plan uh I think a lot of it was pushing and pulling uh really looking at as Bob mentioned last year was the 45th anniversary of uh the Pearl Street Mall which has been a great success of a downtown uh downtowns all over uh

[136:00] emulate or try to emulate what we have tapped into here in in our downtown in a number of ways and the design and the management and the the the ecosystem that is downtown so really building on our success over the past but also it's a new day things have changed since the last few years everything about downtown has changed our retail all over the place that has changed people are spending a lot more money online how retail operates is different our whole restaurant industry is different how we use Office Space has transformed how we use public space has greatly transformed how we engage with each other in community in many ways has transformed so what does that mean for the downtown moving forward and also looking to the Future um it was the 45th anniversary my math says there's five years still now less than uh five years a little more than four years till the 50th Anniversary so

[137:01] really taking advantage of that extraordinary Milestone to have a conversation about what is what is our downtown how does it serve the community how does it Serve the People of Boulder in the community of Boulder so we're very excited to to take this on and really look at it as a five-year Vision uh ramping up to the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Street Mall but expanding beyond the mall and looking at downtown next slide we were very fortunate to engage with the services of MiG to help consult the with the process we did a competitive bidding process and really looked at uh Mig was a fantastic fit they've done a lot of other work in in Boulder and really have a relationship with Boulder but at the same time have a global reach and we're able to bring some best practices and and help us with with strategy and the vision and communication I go ahead next slide at the same time we really wanted it to be specific to Boulder and make a lot of

[138:00] sense for our community so we we had a vision plan steering committee uh to guide the process including represent tips from each of our boards as well as City staff leadership from Community Vitality Parks Recs Parks and Recreation and transportation and uh three at large community members as well next slide so with that we started the process by getting as much input from as broad of his community as we can go ahead starting with our stakeholders we had some really interesting conversations with our joint boards stakeholder surveys and gauging the property owners business owners employees residents neighborhoods charettes in a lot of focus groups we talked with employees we talked with County residents we talked with CU community members and and got a lot of information that way and next slide went out to the community quite a bit we had a lot of engagements at

[139:02] events I know I saw many of you at some of them we we were able to set up at our events downtown at bands on the bricks and in events at the The Band Shell last summer but we also wanted to make sure we weren't just asking our fans and the people who were already coming downtown so we we've spent a lot of time going out into the community and doing engagements in North Boulder at the first Friday we spent a day at Scott Carpenter pool at all of the rec centers we we crashed a few parties at building Boulder housing Partners events we were at feed forwards Outreach pretty much anyone who would talk to us about downtown Boulder we we wanted to listen I go ahead next slide um so our Outreach Eng our Outreach comprised of a lot of different activities asking community members about vision prioritization of some of the things we started to hear

[140:00] and kind of refining that uh go ahead and with the next slide there uh and then also online we we were able to utilize the the city who's great be heard Boulder resource and we got hundreds of of hundreds of uh engagements on online and in some social media as well and next slide and then um this has all been very much a consolidation of a lot of work that's been done we're not we're not starting starting from zero so a lot of the input was as you can see here in numerous recent plans some City plans some documents that we put together from the downtown Boulder partnership in our in our groups and kind of put that input into the plan as well so that's the input and now is the drum roll moment here's here's what we have learned our vision uh go ahead next slide this is our vision statement the the bumper sticker version of our vision is to grow downtown's reach community and success

[141:03] and the vision statement that was revealed in this process that that we spent a lot of time discussing and talking about as you see on the screen downtown Boulder is a vibrant Mosaic of human-centered places and sub-districts that provide diverse experiences and opportunities for all through deliberate inclusion Innovation and co-creation so I'm very proud of the the process and the product and that is the vision so now I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the the action recommendations and strategies that that came out of this plan too really achieve and live this Vision which I think is a really exciting Vision so how are we doing so far I love being the last thing on the agenda because that means I can go on all night right thank you Mr Mayor um so we're going to talk about some of the Big Ideas we came up with sort of six big ideas that concentric out

[142:01] um next slide uh before I I touch on on those we had these filters that we kind of put the big ideas through as we developed with the big Ideas really looking at of these proposals these action ideas proposals do they have a positive long term as well as short-term impact we really talked about do do the recommendations provide more access uh are are they are we providing more access physical assets social Access Financial access and how do how do these proposals meet the vision we're very proud of that vision statement but we really wanted to it to live through these proposals so how to do that and then of course uh how how might the proposals be harmful uh in unintentionally and to who and how do we mitigate that and really look at alleviating the inequitable impacts or potential harm so um let's talk about some big Ideas uh go ahead next slide so

[143:01] as I intimated the ideas sort of begin in the center and and build out um and and here they are starting with the Pearl Street Mall and really positioning the next 50 years of first success uh but then looking Beyond them all to facilitate Discovery activation and opportunities off of the Pearl Street well uh expanding into the creek Corridor really embracing that extraordinary asset that we have right here adjacent to our downtown and really make it not adjacent it's part of our downtown and how do we Embrace that in continuing out we have amazing other neighborhoods commercial districts residential neighborhoods how do we most appropriately and effectively connect with the rest of Boulder on a physical level a Mobility level but also a psychologically level what it how does downtown serve the other commercial districts and residents and neighborhoods tie it all together with with safe comfortable and interesting infrastructure and then telling the the

[144:01] story of increased understanding so I'm going to touch on each of these briefly go ahead next slide in terms of positioning the the Pearl Street Mall I think let's keep going I have slides for each of this uh on the Pearl stream we're really reimagining the 1300 block for context the 1300 block is sort of the center of the center it's the the block that the the county building is on we have a number of our events I expect to see you all at bands on the bricks every Wednesday in the summer and it's where our visitor information center is it's where our public restrooms are it serves a number of functions and there's an opportunity We Believe to to look at how we use that space and how we really uh reimagine it in ways that it can do more and do all of the things that it does even more effectively so we're excited about that conversation that's a conversation where we're beginning uh as Bob mentioned there's some uh Pearl

[145:01] Street reinvestment funds that the voters approved last year that will we hope to inform how to engage the community in that conversation and importantly our partners with the county uh as a big part of that block is theirs and and the functionality of that block is important to so many different activities and functions so uh we're excited about the the possibility of the 1300 block next slide moving a little bit of east from there to the 1400 block I think uh one of the things we really talked about is the East End and the opportunity that exists on the East End of Pearl Street and the 1400 block as a Gateway we have extraordinary play structures up and down the mall and and looking at the 1400 block is as a an opportunity to engage and activate that that location a little more so there's a lot of exciting opportunities on the Pearl Street Mall for for reimagining and reinvestment uh next slide please

[146:00] um and um just jumping back on that not back on the slide but part of that conversation about Pearl Street is really and one of the themes of the vision plan is co-creation how do we do this with the community how do we not uh impose the the vision but really build the vision and the implementation of the vision from the community moving on to our our second big exciting uh activation or proposal is is enhance human-centered streetscapes activating the surface parking lots and alleys we have a lot of spaces that are underutilized that could provide a lot of opportunities uh and this all ties together promoting affordable and food retail options this came up a lot in our input of about affordability and how do we allow for more affordable both commercial space and goods and and so there's an opportunity to explore some of the underutilized spaces towards that and uh and then sub-district identity

[147:00] Pearl Street Mall is is world renowned and there's a lot of our downtown and there's more opportunities to expand we have an extraordinary West End extraordinary East End looking at 13th Street and moving East South Northwest and and really promoting and creating Place making and branding in sub districts go ahead next slide and then uh these are pretty pictures that support those ideas go ahead next slide uh very excited about our third uh as we again continue to move outward the creek Corridor is such an important part of this community an important part of downtown and how do we continue to invest in support and embrace the the natural environment that is there and really fold that into the identity and the programming and the activation go ahead next slide and again continuing outward uh connecting to nearby neighborhoods

[148:00] we're very very excited downtown about some of the more exciting things we've been talking about is University Hill and the opportunities with the conference center in the hill hotel and what does that mean for downtown and how do we how does downtown support uh the investment on the hill and and connect with the hill so we're very excited about Mobility exploration and and really looking at how do we connect with the University Hill also Boulder Junction also North Boulder there's a lot of excitement happening throughout the city and what is downtown's role and relationship to all of the excitement and then also uh Beyond just the commercial districts which are very important how do we make sure we are stay connected with our neighborhoods from an access standpoint and a programming and identity standpoint uh go ahead next slide um safe and comfortable and interesting infrastructure really looking at how do we tie all of this together uh a lot of what we we talked about is is Discovery

[149:00] you know uh how opportunities for enhanced public art program that's Dynamic uh shade structures came up a lot I think we we love our trees in uh trees trees sadly have a lifespan and they sometimes take a long time before they provide shade so what else can we do in addition to more uh trees and continuing the great work that forestry does with that but uh so looking at the infrastructure on a lot of different levels and then finally one more uh next slide please really uh how do we tell this story how do we promote downtown as belonging to all all people in Boulder and all Boulder rights no matter when they get here or who they are if they're here for the day they're a boulder right and you know our tourists and our locals and how do we really tell the story of of belonging and not only tell the story but continue to to actualize the story of belonging um a lot of conversations obviously when we talk about downtown we do talk about

[150:01] some of the challenges around our our approach to the unhoused uh challenges here so how do we play a role in communication of that and kind of helping to to understand and provide support around those conversations and um finally the the really last and first thing is continued enhanced engagement this is a launching point we we have a vision plan we worked really hard on it and it's done but it's just beginning so all of this will require a lot more engagement with community members Community groups we really worked hard to make sure every Voice Was Heard and of course we have a lot more work to do we we need to do better and we need to keep working to include everybody in the conversation of building our downtown uh next slide there you go that's some pictures I've continued and he has engagement uh go ahead next slide there so there we are

[151:00] back where we started the vision downtown Boulder is a vibrant Mosaic of human-centered places and sub-districts that provide diverse experiences and opportunities for all through deliberate inclusion Innovation and co-creation I'm going to keep saying it and and then and then we're going to do all the work to manifest it uh carry on more slides coming up there's our big Ideas again uh keep going uh so I'm going to segue into now what uh this is a five-year Vision plan I think some of this work will take a lot longer than five years some of this we're working on right now uh and so I'm going to just touch on what we're working on on our work plan for this year uh go ahead next slide um ours this is there's a lot on this slide but on the bottom there is our our strategic pillars for the year really looking at Public Safety economic Vitality inclusion equity and co-creation and and city-wide connectivity uh so I'm going to touch on some of the work that we are doing currently a little bit of the work and go ahead next slide in these areas

[152:02] Public Safety we we are very proud of and we continue to iterate our ambassador program downtown we feel really good about the value and that they provide to the community in supporting a lot of the other Public Safety uh and and you know really the feeling of welcoming that they provide in the downtown uh really working with our ambassador programs to continue to coordinate more with Outreach Services uh looking at advocating developing more strategic advocacy uh communication and education we talked on that and Public Safety activation is such a big part of that how do we activate our public spaces uh activated spaces generally are and feel safe so that's a big part of what we do go ahead next slide economic Vitality is a is a big part of what we do and what we always do we do uh I'll I'll brag on us for a little bit we we do quite a a bit of marketing and

[153:00] and work very closely with visit Boulder her in telling the story of Boulder and US specifically downtown Boulder so that's a big piece of our economic Vitality is is telling the story The Second Story is is still very soft relative to pre-pandemic days so we're really exploring how do we how do we re-engage people in in coming back to the office downtown or or just activating this great office space that we have we do a lot of data collection we're really looking at how do we learn more from the data we collect about who's downtown and why and when and I may have mentioned before activations we do a lot of events and activations that's not just for Public Safety it's for economic Vitality as well and next slide our third strategy is an inclusive inclusion equity and co-creation and again this is really an important value for the organization really expanding our programmatic Partnerships in all of

[154:00] our events and activations how do we engage more people bring more people to the conversation we talked about the 1300 block reimagining reimagining did I mention activation we're doing more activation we have a great alley Gallery program if you haven't spent time in the alleys we have some great artwork on the doors of the alleys building on that looking more at a continued training on diversity Equity inclusion and bias training for internally but also encouraging and working with Visa Builders done a great job of putting up a portal for service employees around some bias training really working more to encourage that and affordable commercial this has come up a lot in the vision plan is is affordability what can we do to support that explore affordable commercial programs in the downtown and our community Advisory Board which is a really amazing group of leaders in the community who's focused on our our

[155:00] efforts for inclusion and belonging really supporting the goals of that group as well one more strategy I believe here Citywide connectivity really looking at how we support as I mentioned at the university health connections and and other connections and the city is doing some great work on mobility and access strategies and we want to make sure we're part of that conversation and and really targeting neighborhood engagement how do we keep the neighbors involved I think I have one more thing to tell you about oh activations um we're doing some downtown activations I'm just going to touch on some of the things we're doing if you come downtown even if you spend a lot of time downtown please do make sure to look up for the next little bit through uh Boulder Arts week the student Banner project is something that we do that's a collaboration with uh local schools and Boulder Arts week we have extraordinary artists young artists from grade school through high school who put up we do the student Banner program down on Pearl

[156:00] Street we're doing a number of activations the bolded activations here are new this year next week is that already next week we're doing a an experiment of an apres ski Festival on the west end so we're going to be having a party on the West End next March 12th we'll have some fire pits and furniture and booths from out outdoor it's I know it's a rarity to get outdoor apparel vendors showing up downtown but we'll we might have some some there there and then of course the most adorable event on the planet in Spring is tulip fairy and elf Festival uh and another new thing we're doing this year a window painting project again with young people coming to paint uh spring themed uh pictures on on Windows of businesses downtown we're doing a series of Outdoor Cinema um on the East End the West End and in the Civic area in June July and August so stay tuned for that and that's

[157:01] coupled with also re returning of the Pearl Street race series we have the Pearl Street Mile and uh which we're bringing back this year in partnership with Team production Lee troop and his his team the East End and West End mile I think they were 3ks pre-pandemic but we're making them all Miles because we're exhausted frankly and then of course the the the very popular all-electric Tebow train runs every weekday in the summer between Memorial Day and and Labor Day and our Pearl Street Arts Festival in in July and bands on the bricks we have eight fun-filled Wednesdays and then just a tease uh for in next fall where we're producing a a very fun uh co-created Festival of Activation so uh some weekend in the fall will be uh the where our working title is TBD Boulder so um there's we're going to have activations throughout downtown all

[158:00] kinds of activations from Community groups so stay tuned for that so that's just a little bit of a tease of downtown activations so that's our vision plan that's our year is there another slide I think I'm I think there it is um thank you so much I'm I would love to answer any questions or get any answers or just have a conversation but I just want to end by thanking you again for all of the support that the city and City staff has provided through this project and I'm really proud of the work that we've done together I hope I hope you all are as well so happy to entertain questions thanks so much for all that chip it's exciting to see the vision plan come together and can't wait to see what you do next we got uh Tara you know I never do I never think we have enough uh I mean the the beauty of of downtown Boulder in the Pearl Street Mall is we don't have to do much to activate downtown we have some of the best buskers you're ever going to see we

[159:00] have you know all of the people who are downtown it it is activating so I I think our role in as we build activations is really to uh Foster people who aren't downtown to come downtown and and co-create with with folks so I would never enough but we don't have to do anything and it's activated but we get to do things and make it even more interesting for more people so right Bob so could you expand on that a little bit more because you talked about people who um who we don't see downtown can you give me some specific examples on some of these activations where um where your your drawing or hoping to draw people downtown who maybe are not traditionally seen um in in that area uh thank you for that I think that's a great question you know we have done a lot of work and continue to do a lot of work with our community Advisory Board to really understand we don't know who's not here because they're not here so really trying to reach out to the

[160:00] community we we did have some great engagement with the City's community connectors on the vision plan as well um and I think as similarly at the idea of really how do we engage people who are less engaged um and I do think it's you know part of the vision the the statement and the vision plan uh one of the really words is co-creation and really looking to expand our Partnerships bring folks in we do a great bands on the bricks series as you know because you're at all of them and uh in the last few years we've really tried to partner with other organizations to have for example we've had healthcare worker nights where we've invited the healthcare workers from the community to come and you know celebrate them and buy them a drink and and really have a moment and look looking at how do we do shift our programming and expand our programming for some of the nights to to reach different audiences so by doing that and doing Partnerships we do see people who come downtown who haven't as

[161:01] much and and really expanding on it so I think for us the co-creation pieces is key in that in bringing other audiences down um I think that the festival we're talking about in in the fall really will epitomize that if we're successful we're going to really try to create a festival that is our role is to create the space and and to try to create a vehicle for other people to come in and express their ideas Express their Vision in activations in in downtown and kind of have the conversation about what is downtown and how to how does it serve us so hopefully that answers your question a little bit it's both generally and specific targeting people to come down and really continuing to say who's not here and where are they and how do we engage with them and invite them in and invite them and not just to participate but to create the downtown of the future with us and Jim just along those lines you know

[162:00] one of the things that I hear repeatedly from folks in our community is the need for permanent physical locations for particularly um for marginalized groups in our community right so minority-owned businesses will storefronts for example right that can serve as those physical connection points for groups in our community Cultural Center those kinds of things um so you know especially as we're thinking about how to promote affordable food and Retail how can we support more minority-owned businesses with storefronts or Cultural Center other kinds of spaces to be downtown that are really going to be those permanent things so it's not just a you know come in for a festival and maybe you'll come back another time but really a permanent space that shows that we are really investing in getting folks from marginalized groups in our in our downtown to spend more time there yeah it's a great question and it's you know it's the question how to and you know it's not a secret downtown Boulders

[163:00] expensive right the commercial property is expensive it's one of the challenges of this success um I think there there are a lot of way ways that that we have really supported the city in the mobile vendor carts for example is something that's a very low barrier low barrier of Entry It's relatively cheap it's affordable we've worked really hard through our community Advisory Board the community connectors to do Outreach within those spaces become available when those permits become available to do a lot of Outreach and I think we've been successful in attracting some minority businesses and those we can do better we can do more and part of it is what are the opportunities uh I think part of the vision as we talk about expanding uh downtown we're talking about expanding the the reach of who is part of downtown and part of that is expanding the footprint of downtown I think there's extraordinary opportunities to go looking at 13th Street and some activations where the farmers market are

[164:00] to provide some more opportunities there are more markets um I think it's it's one step at a time though and you know I certainly don't have the answers but I think we need to continue to invite people and provide opportunities so providing affordable commercial space in Prime space is is going to be challenging because it's not affordable and you know additionally in addition to just rent there's a lot of cost to doing business so where are the Alternatives how do we expand the footprint how do we make downtown bigger and more accessible we've seen some successes I mean I think we have great opportunities like you know I'm excited for Avante has a new uh vendor who's a I want to say El Salvadorian Restaurant there which is a great example of something that's a private Enterprise with a master leaseholder who takes on the huge expense of that and is able to offer a smaller and use I think there's

[165:01] there's models to look at both in the private sector and the public sector and most importantly in the private Public Partnerships so but thank you for the question it's a great question yeah above and then learn yeah I just wanted to follow on Nicole's a good comment uh because I I get the fact that um you know we've got a lot of commercial spaces privately owned and those um landlords are going to um for the most part maximize their their um their revenues and and charged with the market will bear but I also want to remind us that a lot of um properties downtown are actually owned by the city so this is probably directed as much at Chris and Nuria as as it is Chip you know and a few things I can think of was the the two kiosks are owned by the city um the um most of that block uh 13th Street between Arapahoe and Canyon is owned by the city some of which are buildings are being vacated soon and we've got the whole um wrap around the parking garage and the south side of pearl was that in the 1500 or 1600 block and so there are a lot of properties that are owned by the city and so we may

[166:00] have limited ability to um nudge landlords to reduce rents where we don't own the properties where we do own the properties I hope that we're looking at opportunities to welcome in communities that maybe can't afford 40 or 50 or 60 per square foot but um build um what we're trying to do on on equity in diversity and inclusion thanks for that and I'll say sorry um I'll say that if you recall from last year's check-in uh one of Brad's items was bringing like 13 different plans that had to do with the downtown together this is part of that effort and certainly um we are constantly aware of the need for affordable commercial and bringing um our values to that which really revolve around Equity so we'll be thinking about what that looks like and frankly we'll be thinking about that not just for downtown but other areas of the city and I'll say that with the approval of the East Boulder sub-community planned so many opportunities may be there to really have a very vibrant

[167:01] Center as well so I think it's it's really on our radar I don't know Brad if you had anything else to add or if you're good you don't have to but we realize you sat all the way at the end trying to be I was almost hiding no good evening Council Brad Mueller director of planning and development services so um you know these types of Partnerships are wonderful and rare when an entity is able to take up an effort as comprehensive as this it's kind of a planner's dream because we do know that as we embark on those various different planning elements that I outlined last week that we think that there's an important facilitation role for our department but really crosses a dozen or so different um plans between three or four of our departments this is the type of thing that really is Plug and Play so we know that there's already some good

[168:00] engagement with what is an obvious major stakeholder both as an entity and the various folks that chip alluded to so we're excited about this uh we're plugged in and informed about it and even though it's not a city vision and there's many other stakeholders of course will will want to need to engage it is great it's a great foundation and like I said a bit of a planner's dream as we as we imagine embarking on all that and I'm happy to answer any other questions thank you thanks Brad Lauren thank you um I really appreciated this Vision plan and the framing of downtown as a vibrant Mosaic and the focus on belonging I think one of my biggest concerns is that our downtown might lose some of its unique character and become more of just a high-end Open

[169:01] Air Mall um we've seen it happen in other communities and that's definitely I think a challenge that to make sure that it feels very of this place and of our community you talked a lot about sort of safety and comfortability and I for me I want to make sure that those are sort of mostly focused on physical and emotional safety I think that um because I really want to see us like be visually and culturally daring and experimental and you know I think that we can do both um so I guess I wanted to ask you if you believe that that's important and if you beyond sort of the Partnerships and the co-creation which I think is a great way to do this what else we can do to kind of encourage that more experimental

[170:00] nature for our downtown yeah I I really love that framing I think that that that's an important distinction about being safe and being Innovative and being creative and you know in a lot of ways um I and I think it's something there's a lot of tension we struggle with in that and and you know a lot of the challenges we have in Boulder are the challenges of our success um I I would say again my response is the the vision of growing folder um and there's there are going to be things that let's not mess with what's working let's build on it both geographically culturally socially so you know I I really I really appreciate that distinction about safety and um comfortability um and there's so much more we can do without jeopardizing any of of what already exists in that safe so I don't know if I'm I'm answering that question but I think that's um it's a yes and uh conversation and

[171:03] again how do we look at not changing what's working but building on it to grow to do more and more differently with you know more more ideas and More in you know there's there's places we can take risks um jumping back to the the affordable uh space question if I can just finish the city has put together a great program as as Bob mentioned in some of the spaces on his Art Gallery is one of the great examples of a an affordable program and it's not just rent excessive ability affordability and accessibility go hand in hand so I think we just need to continue to have the conversation as a community about how do we make downtown accessible from an economic standpoint from a safety standpoint from a social cultural standpoint and it's it they're the conversations we're having and they're the conversations we need to have and we just need to continue to have those conversations so reducing rent is a piece of it but it's not all

[172:01] of it so this one's for actually for Brad if you don't mind coming back up Brad um we have um you know chip refer to the the Second Story um challenge we've got a lot of empty office space some of that potentially could be converted to residential I know that's not easy to do and there's there's two there's two barriers that one is financial and there's nothing you can do about that but then there's the regulatory component as well and and so that's I guess one one part of the question is is what can we do from a regulatory standpoint to facilitate um the adapter reuse of of Second Story office space that may never come back and the second part of it relates to the size of some of the first floor retail space we've got some big swaths of retail space that's just huge eight thousand feet ten thousand feet twelve thousand feet that have big old four rent signs on it and the reason that is is when you do ten thousand square feet times sixty dollars a foot it gets really stinking expensive and this goes back to Nicole's point about how do we

[173:01] increase small businesses to come in so I'd ask you and maybe get an answer now or not they reflect on it how do we from a regulatory standpoint again facilitate the breakup of some of that space where we can take a 10 000 square foot space and make it into two five twos so that a small business can come in there um I I understand there's physical constraints sometimes in access points but if we're standing in the way of that from a regulatory standpoint I'd really like to understand that and what we as a body can do to facilitate the breakup of space into smaller spaces not only so it could be used because some of it's sitting there empty but more importantly so it can be used by businesses that are small or start up minority owned so I'd love your thoughts either tonight or in the future yeah um you know I'm gaining an appreciation for the um probably importance of flexibility uh in the situation that Boulder is facing I think it is actually somewhat true across the the country as we come out of covet and find what uh very well could be in

[174:01] excess inventory of uh office space and um and this desire a very healthy one for my life to use planner's standpoint of mixed use as well um I think some of those are maybe straightforward tenant Improvement tenant finish kind of processing and those are things as I've described working on others get into the building code and maybe get a little more complex on a building by building case and uh your your colleague and council member folkert's can probably appreciate some of the challenges of transitioning certain office into residential and maybe it's not even so much the code as uh you know where the HVAC is is located in all those kind of fun things that make those transitions um difficult but I think it is clear that we both as an industry and as a department need to be thinking about um and imagining Flex space if you will and transitional and transformational

[175:01] space in that regard so that that's that's part of the package for sure as we as we think about things so you might say breaking up is hard to do I would not say that [Laughter] I think you were at a Crossroads really not not just Boulder but Boulder is at a crosswords where we are have lost so much creativity and we have so many issues like you know the good old waiting a very long time for uh a permit which affects people who are just trying to start their own business and it really gives like giant I'm not against giant corporations or anything like that but it does takes away from the creativity that we can have downtown so I'm very excited Brad I think this can be a crosswords for the positive that maybe we can go from having the longest

[176:00] possibly in Colorado time that it takes to get a permit to the shore we should we could have it the shortest I mean can you imagine if we're known to be the most flexible most creative shortest time that it takes to get a permit I mean let's think big that's what I'm saying I'd like to think big it's a big idea a big idea good stuff anything else for chip on the Downtown Vision plan right well seeing nothing else I'll just wrap up and say chip thanks so much for coming and sharing all this exciting work with us tonight and I think I speak for all of us who say we're very open to having you come to us and if there's any way that we can co-create an activation with you we are there for it I I have big plans for you I appreciate that thank you again for the the opportunity and I'll see you downtown see there best line of the night what did you call that a demald thing okay we got we got one thing left here which is a discussion on boards and

[177:01] commission updates to council 8B and Nicole I believe you brought this to us it was you and mine okay so Nicole was asking for it to become forward sooner but my apologies so so during the retreat we heard several people inquire about or missed wish that there had been sort of an update from boards and commissions and while the retreat has passed we still have the opportunity to ask words and commissions if there are questions if we would like to get an update from all of them and so Tara and I just wanted to bring that forward to see if that was something council is interested in if there are particular questions that we would like to hear back from our boards and commissions on as we go into

[178:02] this upcoming year like what what do we want our boards and commissions to tell us do we want it to be General a general um Vision or do we want it to be more specific what they would like to see changes they would like to make that type thing I appreciate the two of you bringing this to our bring this up for a little bit more discussion um I would say my perspective on this is I think kind of the ship sailed a little bit I think the time would have been like December to get that feedback to inform the retreat we're about to appoint new members to boards and commissions which is going to be in March and then they got to get up and running to so I just I think that you know to have a to have a report we're going to in April or May and you know and then we're only just a few minutes before the election again so I think um it's a good conversation to have I just think our timing is off on it but I

[179:00] think we really want to flag this for the next Retreat committees conversation and make sure that we have a robust conversation with our boards and commissions leading into the next Retreat so thanks for that Matt that's exactly what I was going to say I think now that it's March and and we usually ask our boards and commissions for their feedback and work plan in December we're only nine months away from that and by the way our work plan is way too big already so the last thing we want to be doing is asking our boards and commissions hey so what should we be working on because we have a pretty good idea of that I mean I'm sure they have brilliant ideas but we have no space um so I agree with Matt that that let's just put this on our calendar for next November December to ask them what they'd like to see us work on in the 24-25 cycle however I do have a suggestion um which everyone May hate and that's okay too but I'm just gonna I'm just full of crazy ideas I'd like to suggest um that rather than asking each board and commission what they think the priorities are or what they we should be working on is is maybe surveying individual board and commission members

[180:00] because I you know some of our boards are happy boards and from our boards are having some rough spells and maybe there's something the boards and commissions committee can work on is just putting together a very very simple five or eight question survey to send out to our board and commission members you know what do you like about serving on a boarding commission what are your challenges um you know what would you say to your successor you know things like that just kind of open-ended questions to get from them some input because I think that's going to help you guys and all of us do our jobs because if we have some areas of concern or some issues or some uncomfortableness I think it sometimes is easier for people to express themselves obviously anonymously but individually as opposed to forcing a board of five or seven people to get together and put together a letter and then they have to kind of fight it out and so on and so forth but just asking we've got roughly 100 people plus or minus a little bit we're serving on our boards and commissions why not ask them how it is and what what they would change if they had an opportunity I'm not trying to create more work for you guys but I don't think I don't why I say I guess I am yes I am create more work

[181:00] for you guys but you could you turn around and then hand off to staff I'm sure um but I'm just suggesting that it doesn't have to be in March it could be in the summer it could be after we have some new people appointed but I'm just curious because I don't think we have ever to my knowledge surveyed individual board members about their experience on the boards and what they like and what they don't like so I'm just throwing that out there it's something to do between now and next December when we formally ask as Matt suggested what they want on the work plan so I don't you guys can react to that if you want yeah that's what you do like it I think it would be good to check in with folks and I'm sure that they would appreciate that and I would just ask that as we are thinking about the survey and asking volunteers to spend more time filling something out that we're just really clear about what we're going to do with that information well I mean keep it short but also that we know what we're gonna do so it's not like people spend all this time filling something out and the new Council comes in and maybe we do something maybe we don't right I think that that can almost be

[182:01] worse in terms of making people feel heard so just being really clear about what what it is we're going to be doing with that and how we're going to use it and I think that will probably inform some of the questions that we're asking too but I think it would be good to check in with folks more formally all right yeah I just wanted and I know that this is something that the subcommittee can work with staff on but just wanted to remind you that we will continue to move forward with our boarding commission consultation and that could also be sort of folded into that so I leave that to the subcommittee great I'll I'll call on myself and say I I agree that we don't want to do a work plan check-in at this point I had thought about maybe getting a status update from board just like what's top of mind right now this survey could be a version of that and I don't like the idea of hearing from individuals you know the a pulse check on how serving on a board uh feels to them and what they feel is effective or not I would just I would um just caution to keep it short and and targeted uh both for the board

[183:00] and commission members to Nicole's point but also our time is limited as well so if we got 110 page submissions that would be hard to keep up with technical I was just going to follow up on nuria's point that I think this would be a great thing to fold in because I think for for me at least the question is really about some of the work that Nuri is leading and you know are these are these um are we using the boards effectively are they set up the correct way for what it is we need right now in terms of community feedback and guidance so I if we could fold it into that process I think I would like that as well okay Rachel I'm wondering do we do like exit interviews with board members rather than like doing a one a one-time how's this how's everybody doing in 2023 could we maybe just Institute something that's ongoing to to open up the door to feedback because I don't think I mean we can't obligate the next Council to do anything with this so we can't really say you're gonna give this

[184:00] to us and we're gonna act on it because I don't know when we'll get it back and um you know any council's uh you know able to just undo whatever the previous one did really so just wondering if maybe we wanted Workman commissions could look at just doing something that's ongoing you know I would think with with exiting members might be the easiest we do not do formal interviews right now yeah and I think a lot of this conversation ties into sort of a larger conversation that we're having on the boards um and commissions committee about you know best practices and standardizing some things and so I think that like both the quest we could I think it was my intention to start to think about what sort of questions we should be asking boards and commissions as we move into um sort of looking at all the rules and regulations around them and also what kinds of things we should make regular priorities to help you know make

[185:00] sure that these positions are meaningful for people well I wonder if we might just send this back to to you all to Taryn Lauren to take this feedback do you feel like this is something you could work with on terms of what to take next steps what next steps take yeah this is great feedback thank you you guys okay good enough for everybody great well that's the end of our formal agenda but if you all don't mind I'm going to take a brief point of personal privilege to give a shout out to my father who is in the audience tonight Dr Charles Crockett um so his his passion for politics in his example is just an all-around amazing human being have always been an inspiration to me so wonderful to have you here tonight do you want to address the board no um and then my very last thing is to thank Emily Richardson for a phenomenal job done tonight as acting City Clerk appreciate the the rate and Elise thanks for giving her the chance to do it and being here with us still tonight

[186:03] absolutely any final thoughts all right with that algavel is closed nine to four pm [Music]